TikTok's Parent Company Sues Ex-Intern For £860K, Demands Public Apology Over 'AI Project Sabotage'

ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of TikTok, has filed a lawsuit against a former intern, accusing him of deliberately sabotaging an artificial intelligence project. The tech giant is seeking £860,000 ($1.1 million) in damages and a public apology, according to South China Morning Post.

Allegations of Intentional Sabotage

The lawsuit, lodged in a Beijing district court, alleges that Tian Keyu, a former technology division intern, tampered with code critical to the company's AI model training tasks. ByteDance claims these actions disrupted key operations and incurred significant costs. Earlier this month, the company issued an internal disciplinary notice referencing the case, per Business Insider.

ByteDance is not only demanding financial compensation but also a public apology from Tian. The company dismissed Tian in August, clarifying that he was not directly involved with its AI research lab. This contradicts claims made on Tian's LinkedIn profile, which falsely states he had been working as a research intern at ByteDance's AI lab since 2021.

Reports of the alleged sabotage initially circulated online, including claims that Tian caused damage to 8,000 GPUs and incurred multimillion-dollar losses. ByteDance has denied these figures, stating that while the incident was disruptive, its scope was exaggerated in some reports.

The company, which operates Doubao, a chatbot similar to OpenAI's ChatGPT, has yet to disclose specific operational impacts caused by Tian's alleged actions.

TikTok Faces a US Ban Deadline

As ByteDance battles internal issues, it also faces a significant external challenge in the United States. The US government has ordered ByteDance to divest its stake in TikTok by 19 January 2024, with failure to comply resulting in a ban on the platform. This directive follows allegations that ByteDance could share American user data with the Chinese Communist Party, per the Bipartisan Policy Center.

While ByteDance has denied these claims, concerns about TikTok's influence and data practices have heightened. Despite this, President-elect Donald Trump has stated he would oppose any ban, promising to ensure TikTok continues to operate in the US.

Major AI Milestone Amid Legal Battles

Despite its legal and political challenges, ByteDance has demonstrated significant progress in artificial intelligence. A collaborative project between ByteDance researchers and academics from Peking University recently earned the 'Outstanding Paper' award at the Neural Information Processing Systems (NeurIPS) conference.

The paper, titled Visual Autoregressive Modelling: Scalable Image Generation via Next-Scale Prediction, presents a novel approach to improving the speed, scalability, and quality of image generation. ByteDance's presence at NeurIPS this year was notable, with over 50 research papers accepted for presentation at the conference in Vancouver, Canada, scheduled from 10 to 15 December.

This achievement underscores ByteDance's commitment to advancing AI technologies, even as it faces heightened scrutiny over its operations.

Balancing Innovation with Accountability

The lawsuit against Tian Keyu highlights ByteDance's determination to protect its intellectual property and operational integrity. Simultaneously, the company's battles over TikTok's operations in the US underscore the challenges of maintaining trust and compliance in a global tech landscape. ByteDance's ability to balance innovation with accountability will play a crucial role in shaping its future trajectory.