Qwen 3.5-397B Model Theft: Rio's LLM Exposed as Rebranded Clone
Researchers have demonstrated that Rio de Janeiro's publicly presented 'homegrown' 397B language model is not an original creation but an undisclosed element-wise weight merge of the Nex-N2_pro model and Qwen3.5-397B-A17B. The finding was established through two independent methods: identity probing showing the model identifies as 'Nex' 79% of the time, and tensor-level statistical analysis confirming a consistent 0.6/0.4 blend across all 60 layers. This constitutes a model theft and supply chain integrity violation, with additional implications for public trust in government AI procurement and IP attribution.