TikTok’s ByteDance Fires Intern For Allegedly Sabotaging AI Project

ByteDance has responded to rumours widely circulated on Chinese social media over the weekend, over the firing of an intern.

The Guardian reported that the TikTok parent confirmed it had sacked an intern for allegedly sabotaging an internal artificial intelligence (AI) project.
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2024/oct/21/tiktok-owner-bytedance-sacks-intern-for-allegedly-sabotaging-ai-project

TikTok has, like other major social media platforms, has jumped aboard the AI bandwagon. Earlier this years its Doubao chatbot replaced Baidu’s Ernie.

Earlier this month TikTok also laid off hundreds of staff around the world, as it shifts focus to a greater use of AI for internal content moderation.

Alleged sabotage

According to the Guardian report, ByteDance dismissed the intern in August, which it alleged had ‘maliciously interfered’ with the training of its artificial intelligence models used in a research project.

In a statement posted on its news aggregator service, Toutiao, ByteDance reportedly said that an intern in the commercial technology team had been dismissed for serious disciplinary violations, according to a translation.

It added that its official commercial products and its large language models, the underlying technology for generative AI, had not been affected.

ByteDance also reportedly said that reports and rumours on social media contained exaggerations, including over the scale of the disruption. ByteDance reportedly said this included rumours that as many as 8,000 graphical processing units, the chips used to train AI models, were affected, and that losses were in the tens of millions of dollars.

ByteDance said that it had informed the intern’s university and industry associations about their conduct.

Political tensions

The news of the alleged sabotage comes as TikTok faces huge political pressures and scrutiny in the United States.

American President Biden earlier in the year signed a law that would force ByteDance to divest TikTok to an approved US buyer before the end of his term on 19 January 2025, or face a nationwide ban.

The US government contends that TikTok is a national security threat, an allegation ByteDance strongly disputes.

ByteDance has previously reportedly stated it would prefer to shut down its loss-making app rather than sell it, if all legal options are exhausted. ByteDance also denied it would sell TikTok without the powerful recommendation algorithm that has driven the platform’s success.

TikTok is currently fighting the divest or close order in the US courts.