Pinterest’s CEO was eager this week to tell investors and analysts how much the company has saved using open-source AI models.

“Any CEO that’s not taking advantage of open-source models is almost certainly wasting a lot of their shareholders’ money,” Bill Ready said on the company’s earnings call Tuesday, adding that using open-source costs the company less than 8% of what it would pay for comparable closed, proprietary systems like those from Anthropic or OpenAI.

That’s thanks in part to a Chinese AI model, Alibaba’s Qwen, that’s fine-tuned using Pinterest’s data and supports tools like shopping assistants and chatbots.

DoorDash similarly boasted recently of cost-savings from using Chinese AI models for some of its work, and last week became the latest company to get a letter from US House committees requesting information about its use of Chinese tech. Lawmakers previously queried Airbnb and Cursor about their use of Chinese AI models.

These companies and others are using a cocktail of AI models, including Chinese ones, to develop consumer-facing tools like chatbots that help users plan a trip, choose the best shade of lipstick, or process a refund. Platforms like OpenRouter provide a glimpse at the popularity of different models among developers globally, but the true scale of the use of Chinese models among large American companies remains opaque.

US companies’ using open-source models heightens the tension between cost-conscious business leaders and the US government over its concerns about safety and national security tied to Chinese AI. But the way they’re blended into companies’ tools also highlights consumers’ growing inability to assess whether their personal discussions with a brand’s chatbot are with AI made in China or in the US — a distinction Americans appear to care about.

A Public First survey done in June showed only 9% of US respondents trust Chinese models, while 52% trust their American counterparts. In the most extreme case, a chatbot’s responses could be shaped by the hidden biases of its underlying model — as censorship researchers have documented in Chinese models.

At the same time, executives are under pressure to show investors they’re being prudent about spending on technology to make free AI interfaces. Shares of big-AI-spending companies, like Alphabet and Meta, have come under pressure as their capital expenditures on AI go up. US lawmakers and White House officials have also been debating whether to put restrictions on the use of Chinese open-source models, which they say steal US companies’ intellectual property and could bias users to a Beijing-based worldview.

Strongly worded letters and the prospect of restrictions isn’t deterring companies from using open-source Chinese models, even if it may discourage some from disclosing it, executives say.

“So far there is zero evidence of change in posture” among companies looking to Chinese models to save money, said Amit Jain, CEO of Luma AI, a US-based foundation model startup. “I expect that until there are clearer guidelines there will not be much of a change, if a change is warranted at all.”