Closed-source models have to deal with the current frontier being heavily regulated. Fable, at its old level, was "too good" to be released and they had to add an additional safety layer to sanitize the outputs. Lowering the quality of the models so they are safer and more steerable has been something all the closed-source models have been doing for a while, a requirement that many open source models don't need to deal with.

If Kimi k3 really were above Fable 5 then there invariably the USG would have to consider their restrictions on model capabilities excessive, or one would have to admin closed source models are held to more restrictive safety standards than open source models.

>Although I will reiterate the fact that distillation is not the primary reason why these models are performing so competitively.

How would you know this? How could you ascertain exactly how much performance is attributable to their unique engineering/research? If they really were so competitive they could surely make a model that isn't dependent on distilling Fable or other frontier models.