TikTok parent ByteDance confirms that fired intern sabotaged AI training

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China-based TikTok parent company ByteDance has confirmed it has had to fire a trainee it says deliberately tried to sabotage its AI training.

“An intern in the commercial technology team had committed serious disciplinary violations and the intern was fired,” reads a translation of a ByteDance post on Toutiao, a Chinese social news platform it also owns.

“The trainee involved maliciously interfered with the model training tasks of the commercial technology team’s research project, but this did not affect the formal commercial projects and online business, nor did it involve other companies such as ByteDance’s major models,” ByteDance continues .

The company denies claims that the intern affected 8,000 GPUs or cost them “tens of millions of dollars,” calling such reports “seriously exaggerated.” ByteDance says the intern was fired from his position in August and informed the intern’s school of his behavior.

Tuotiao itself uses AI technology such as machine learning to show each user a curated feed. TikTok also uses AI on the backend for its ‘For You’ algorithm. For ad creation, TikTok launched an AI-powered “Creative Assistant” feature earlier this year.

Tiktok’s algorithm is still similar to that of Douyin, its Chinese version and predecessor, sources familiar with the platforms told Reuters in April.

ByteDance’s Hugging Face profile shows 11 different open-source AI models, including an audio generator, a fast text-to-video generator, and a higher resolution video generator.

ByteDance, which some U.S. officials see as a threat to U.S. national security, is reportedly building a new AI model with Huawei chips and developing its own AI chips with the company.

The US has banned Huawei since 2020, with restrictions dating back to 2017. The Commerce Department recently opened an investigation into chipmaker TSMC over whether it could be violating US export laws by working directly with Huawei – or indirectly through empty channels. Huawei companies.