TikTok proprietor ByteDance sues intern for $1.1 million in damages for ‘sabotaging’ AI venture

TikTok mother or father firm ByteDance goes after a former intern for allegedly sabotaging an AI coaching venture.

In accordance with The South China Morning Put up, ByteDance is searching for 8 million yuan (about $1.1 million) in damages and a public apology from ex-intern Tian Keyu. The case, which has already been accepted by Haidian District Courtroom in Beijing, facilities round accusations of Tian tampering with code associated to an AI coaching venture. ByteDance additionally owns AI chatbot Doubao, which is the corporate’s reply to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

Tian was fired in August as a result of he “maliciously interfered with the mannequin coaching duties,” in response to a assertion from ByteDance. In the identical assertion, ByteDance disputes rumors that the tampering concerned 8,000 GPU playing cards and misplaced the corporate tens of hundreds of thousands of {dollars}, saying these claims are “critically exaggerated.” The corporate additionally mentioned Tian claimed to be part of the AI Lab, however he was actually a part of a separate industrial expertise group.

ByteDance has been busy with its AI-focused initiatives. It has launched a number of options for TikTok together with, AI-generated digital avatars and AI instruments for promoting. It additionally reportedly has a strong net crawler referred to as Bytespider that is gobbling up content material on the web for LLM coaching.

In the meantime, the TikTok ban deadline is arising in January, making its future within the U.S. unsure. That mentioned, President-elect Donald Trump, who’s now on TikTok, mentioned he needs to overturn the ban.