Chinese tech giant Alibaba’s latest Qwen AI model attempted to upload a file to a server located in Beijing, a routine cybersecurity test conducted by Canadian AI model developer and potential rival Cohere has found.

Qwen3.8-Flash-Next tried to send a test string to the external server in Beijing despite the open-weight model’s written reasoning explicitly stating that it would not use any external tools. It was eventually blocked by restrictions put in place as part of the security sandbox, Cohere researchers said in a blog post on Monday, October 26.

Cohere’s findings initially raised concerns that the Qwen model violated a key promise of open-weight AI: that businesses can ensure their data stays in-house by downloading the weights and self-hosting the model.

However, external researchers were quick to dismiss the apparent data privacy threat.…