ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, was caught illegally using OpenAI technology to promote its own super-sized language model. The company attempted to hide the use of an OpenAI API to create a chatbot, but the AI leader blocked the Chinese company’s account while it investigated.
According to The Verge, ByteDance’s actions violate OpenAI’s terms of service: customers are not allowed to “develop any artificial intelligence models that compete with our products and services.” Microsoft, through which ByteDance purchases access to OpenAI, follows the same policy.
According to the publication, citing internal sources, ByteDance knew about this, but continued to use the API to train its LLM model under the working title Project Seed. The API ban for Project Seed development only came into effect after regulators approved the Dubao chatbot for use in China.
OpenAI confirmed to The Verge that it suspended ByteDance’s account due to a violation of its terms of service.
“All API customers must adhere to our usage guidelines to ensure our technologies are used forever. Although ByteDance’s use of our API was minimal, we have suspended its account pending further investigation,” said OpenAI spokesperson Nico Felix, quoted by Business Insider.
At the same time, the portal writes that ByteDance, in response to the publication’s request, denies any violation:
“ByteDance is licensed by Microsoft to use the GPT API. “We use GPT to support products in markets outside of China, but for Dubao we use a self-developed model that is ONLY available in China.”
Author:
Ekaterina Alipova
Source: RB
I am a professional journalist and content creator with extensive experience writing for news websites. I currently work as an author at Gadget Onus, where I specialize in covering hot news topics. My written pieces have been published on some of the biggest media outlets around the world, including The Guardian and BBC News.
