A new development at ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok and several other notable platforms, continues to shake the tech world. It has been revealed that an intern in the company’s AI lab intentionally sabotaged one of the company’s most valuable assets: its artificial intelligence model.

TikTok faced sabotage!

China-based tech giant ByteDance recently announced that an intern in its ad technology team admitted to ‘maliciously interfering’ with the training process of the company’s AI model. However, the company denied the rapidly spreading rumors on social media that the incident resulted in damages exceeding $10 million.

The scandal has caused a huge stir as it happened during ByteDance’s development of Doubao, China’s most popular AI chatbot. Company officials stated that the intern had no connection with the AI lab and was part of the ad technology team.

After the incident, ByteDance not only terminated the intern’s employment but also officially reported the situation to the intern’s university and relevant industry bodies. While the company claims that its commercial online operations and large language models were not affected, many believe these statements were made to avoid angering shareholders.

ByteDance, which operates popular social media apps like TikTok globally and Douyin in China, is also known for its investments in AI. The company utilizes AI technology not only in its Doubao chatbot but also in many innovative projects, such as Jimeng, a text-to-video conversion tool.

What do you think about this situation? Could new scandals emerge in the coming days? Don’t forget to share your thoughts in the comments.