I think it’s important not to let AI companies control the framing here. This is anti-competitive behavior, plain and simple. The fact that xAI/Musk routinely break the law simply provides the fig leaf.

Distillation is a threat to frontier model companies, but that doesn’t make it dangerous or wrong. OpenAI can (and likely will) use the same logic to ban you from using open source harnesses.

I’m on team fuck both of these organizations, but not continuing to work with an organization that already willing violated contracts you had with them doesn’t exactly seem like a hard to justify decision.

That is to say, this isn’t a fig leaf imo.