TikTok-owner, ByteDance, says it has sacked an intern for “maliciously interfering” with the coaching of one in every of its synthetic intelligence (AI) fashions.
However the agency rejected experiences concerning the extent of the injury brought on by the unnamed particular person, saying they “comprise some exaggerations and inaccuracies”.
BBC Information has contacted ByteDance to request additional particulars concerning the incident.
The Chinese language expertise big’s Doubao ChatGPT-like generative AI mannequin is the nation’s hottest AI chatbot.
“The person was an intern with the commercialisation expertise crew and has no expertise with the AI Lab,” ByteDance mentioned in an announcement.
“Their social media profile and a few media experiences comprise inaccuracies.”
Its industrial on-line operations, together with its giant language AI fashions, had been unaffected by the intern’s actions, the corporate added.
ByteDance additionally denied experiences that the incident brought about greater than $10m of harm by disrupting an AI coaching system made up of 1000’s of highly effective graphics processing models (GPU).
Except for firing the particular person in August, ByteDance mentioned it had knowledgeable the intern’s college and business our bodies concerning the incident.
ByteDance operates a few of the world’s hottest social media apps, together with TikTok and its Chinese language-equivalent Douyin.
It’s extensively seen as a pacesetter with regards to algorithm improvement on account of how interesting its apps are to customers.
Like lots of its friends in China and world wide, the social media big is investing closely in AI.
It makes use of the expertise to energy its Doubao chatbot in addition to many different functions, together with a text-to-video device known as Jimeng.