BEIJING, China – ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, has dismissed an intern for allegedly disrupting the training of one of its artificial intelligence (AI) models.
The tech giant confirmed the dismissal but disputed the severity of the incident, calling claims of widespread damage “exaggerated and inaccurate.”
Reports of the breach circulated over the weekend, gaining traction on social media.
ByteDance’s AI model, Doubao—a chatbot comparable to OpenAI’s ChatGPT and widely regarded as China’s leading generative AI—was reportedly involved in the incident.
However, ByteDance clarified that its commercial AI operations were not compromised by the intern’s actions.
“The individual was an intern on the advertising technology team and had no prior experience working with our AI Lab,” ByteDance said in a statement. “There are several inaccuracies in their social media profile and some media reports.”
Contrary to speculation that the interference caused more than $10 million in damages by disrupting an AI training system powered by thousands of high-performance graphics processing units (GPUs), ByteDance insisted the damage was far less severe.
It confirmed that its broader AI development efforts, including its large-scale language models, were unaffected.
ByteDance took immediate steps following the incident, terminating the intern in August.
The company also reported the individual to their university and relevant industry bodies, underscoring the serious nature of the misconduct.
ByteDance, which owns TikTok and its Chinese equivalent Douyin, is a key player in the AI landscape, particularly for its algorithm development.
The company has heavily invested in AI technologies for various applications, including its popular Doubao chatbot and Jimeng, a text-to-video tool.
The tech giant confirmed the dismissal but disputed the severity of the incident, calling claims of widespread damage “exaggerated and inaccurate.”
Reports of the breach circulated over the weekend, gaining traction on social media.
ByteDance’s AI model, Doubao—a chatbot comparable to OpenAI’s ChatGPT and widely regarded as China’s leading generative AI—was reportedly involved in the incident.
However, ByteDance clarified that its commercial AI operations were not compromised by the intern’s actions.
“The individual was an intern on the advertising technology team and had no prior experience working with our AI Lab,” ByteDance said in a statement. “There are several inaccuracies in their social media profile and some media reports.”
Contrary to speculation that the interference caused more than $10 million in damages by disrupting an AI training system powered by thousands of high-performance graphics processing units (GPUs), ByteDance insisted the damage was far less severe.
It confirmed that its broader AI development efforts, including its large-scale language models, were unaffected.
ByteDance took immediate steps following the incident, terminating the intern in August.
The company also reported the individual to their university and relevant industry bodies, underscoring the serious nature of the misconduct.
ByteDance, which owns TikTok and its Chinese equivalent Douyin, is a key player in the AI landscape, particularly for its algorithm development.
The company has heavily invested in AI technologies for various applications, including its popular Doubao chatbot and Jimeng, a text-to-video tool.
