In the Open Weights and American AI Leadership letter, the signatories argue that open weights expand access, strengthen competition and help organisations avoid lock-in. The Real Divide Is Control Over AI DistributionThe open weights model fight is often described as safety versus openness. The next signal to watch is whether Washington treats open weights as a category of risk or as one deployment choice among many. Does Anthropic support banning open weights models? AI model distillation is when one model is trained or improved using outputs from another model.