OpenAI has taken action to suspend the TikTok parent company ByteDance’s account. This decision comes in the wake of a report revealing that ByteDance, a China-owned firm, has been clandestinely leveraging OpenAI’s “GPT” AI technology to develop its own chatbot service.
According to internal company documents cited by The Verge, ByteDance has extensively utilized OpenAI’s application programming interface (API) throughout various stages of its AI product development. The ties between ByteDance and the Chinese government have already drawn considerable attention, leading to heightened federal scrutiny of TikTok’s operations in the United States.
ByteDance’s internal initiative, labeled “Project Seed,” has been a high-priority and secretive endeavor aimed at constructing its own large-language model—an AI tool trained on vast amounts of internet data. The report indicates that ByteDance not only employed OpenAI’s “GPT” for training its model but also for evaluating the ongoing development of its ambitious project.
“All API customers must adhere to our usage policies to ensure that our technology is used for good. While ByteDance’s use of our API was minimal, we have suspended their account while we further investigate”, said OpenAI spokesperson.
“If we discover that their usage doesn’t follow these policies, we will ask them to make necessary changes or terminate their account,” the spokesperson added.
ByteDance reportedly buys its access to OpenAI’s tools through Microsoft, the AI firm’s key investor and partner. Microsoft has similar terms of service.