ByteDance, the Chinese parent company of social media platform TikTok, has fired an intern after they allegedly “maliciously interfered” with a research project involving artificial intelligence.

The firm said the unnamed employee was fired in August after sabotaging the training of one of its AI models.

“An intern in the commercial technology team had committed serious disciplinary violations and the intern had been dismissed”, ByteDance said in a statement on its news aggregation platform Toutiao, according to a translation.

The company said its online operations were not affected by the intern’s alleged actions, including its AI large language models.

"The intern involved maliciously interfered with the model training tasks of the commercial technology team's research project, but it did not affect the formal commercial projects and online business, nor did it involve other businesses such as ByteDance's large models,” the company said.

ByteDance's ChatGPT-like generative AI model Doubao is China’s most popular AI chatbot, and the firm also operates the Chinese equivalent of TikTok called Douyin.

ByteDance denies ‘exaggerated’ reports of damage

The company rejected claims about the severity of the damage caused by the alleged incident involving its former intern after reports spread on social media over the weekend.

Some reports claimed the intern's alleged actions caused more than $15 million ($US10 million) in damage.

The company called those damages “seriously exaggerated”.

ByteDance said an “online rumour” that more than 8,000 graphics processing units (GPUs) — which are key to the development of AI models — were involved in the incident was also false.

The company said the sacked employee’s social media profiles also contained inaccurate information, and the firm had informed the intern's university as well as local industry bodies about the alleged incident.


ByteDance says it has more than 110,000 employees and pays its interns 'competitive salaries'. Photo: ByteDance / Supplied

ByteDance, like most other major technology companies, has invested heavily in AI in recent years, and has been seen as a leader in China given its very popular apps and platforms.

The company said it paid “competitive salaries” to employees in its internship programs.

Interns have previously been blamed for slip-ups within other technology companies, including software firm SolarWinds, which blamed a “solarwinds123” password on an intern in 2021 following a major breach.

ByteDance is facing a potential TikTok ban in the United States, which could see the popular video sharing platform banned in that country if ByteDance does not sell its stake in the app.

The Australian government flagged in July that it would not follow the US’ footsteps by pushing for a local ban.

ByteDance said it now had more than 110,000 employees in over 200 cities globally, including in Sydney.