China on Wednesday warned of "back-door" security risks in U.S.-based company Anthropic's Claude Code artificial intelligence tool, stating that the tool can send sensitive information, including a user's location and identity, to a remote server without consent. The Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology said its cybersecurity threat platform found "AI coding tool Claude Code contains a security back-door vulnerability that poses a serious threat." Users should uninstall or upgrade from affected Claude Code versions 2.1.91 to 2.1.196, released from April 2 to June 29. Anthropic responded that the "backdoor" was an experiment earlier this year to protect against distillation, and noted its policy prohibits usage by entities majority-owned by China-headquartered organizations. The warning follows Anthropic last month blaming Chinese company Alibaba for attempting to extract its AI capabilities, which are not officially available in China; Alibaba did not comment. CNBC confirmed on Monday that Alibaba ordered its employees to stop using Anthropic tools for work starting July 10.