> the idea that self-identifying as Claude is affirmative evidence that it's not distilled

I wasn't arguing that. I was arguing that even if it was distilled from Claude, the distillation isn't why it identifies as Claude. Therefore identifying as Claude isn't evidence of distillation.

Claude has been caught identifing itself as Deepseek:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=47145081

I don't take that to mean it's necessarily been distilled on Deepseek.

Gemini was supposedly caught identifying as Claude:

https://www.reddit.com/r/ChatGPT/comments/1gslm0t/gemini_mod...

I don't take that to mean it was distilled on Claude.

Claude was caught identifying as ChatGPT:

https://www.reddit.com/r/OpenAI/comments/1e34tkr/why_is_clau...

I don't take that to necessarily mean it was distilled on ChatGPT.