The owner of TikTok has sacked an intern for allegedly sabotaging an internal artificial intelligence project. ByteDance said it had dismissed the person in August after they "maliciously interfered" with the training of artificial intelligence (AI) models used in a research project. Thanks to the video-sharing app TikTok and its Chinese counterpart, Douyin, which rank among the world's most popular mobile apps, ByteDance has risen to become one of the world's most important social media companies. Like other big players in the tech sector, ByteDance has raced to embrace generative AI. Its Doubao chatbot earlier this year took over from the competitor Baidu's Ernie in the race to produce a Chinese rival to OpenAI's ChatGPT.

"The individual was an intern with the [advertising] technology team and has no experience with the AI Lab," ByteDance said in a statement. "Their social media profile and some media reports contain inaccuracies." Its commercial online operations, including its large language AI models, were unaffected by the intern's actions, the company added. ByteDance also denied reports that the incident caused more than 10m of damage by disrupting an AI training system made up of thousands of powerful graphics processing units (GPU). Aside from firing the person in August, ByteDance said it had informed the intern's university and industry bodies about the incident.