TikTok owner sues intern who sabotaged artificial intelligence and demands R$ 6.7 million

ByteDance, the Chinese company that owns the TikTok social network, has initiated legal action against a former intern who was fired from the company. The accusation is deliberately “sabotaged” an internal project involving artificial intelligence (AI).

ByteDance, according to documents in the lawsuit filed in a district court in Beijing. He wants compensation of 8 million yuan — equivalent to US$1.1 million or R$6.7 million on direct currency conversion — and public apology. The file now goes to the judge for analysis.

The defendant surnamed Tian “Internal code modified in a way that impairs the operation of an educational model for a research project“why did it happen?”significant resource loss“. The boy would have taken action because he was unhappy with the internal changes: he works in the Chinese giant’s technology team, but not directly in the artificial intelligence laboratory.

While Tian denied the accusations, TikTok’s owner also filed a lawsuit to compensate for the losses. The company also denied previous rumors that the action of the intern, who was fired in August, caused “incalculable” losses, including the loss of thousands of GPUs used in its data centers.

The platform uses artificial intelligence both in the services’ features, as in TikTok, and in its own chatbot Doubao, which operates in China.

TikTok is in a sensitive situation

Besides dealing with the damage to the process and AI system, ByteDance still has other issues to deal with; especially regarding the short video social network.

Recently, the service began banning the use of beautifying filters by minors – largely due to pressure from governments and regulators that it could harm young people’s self-esteem and mental health due to their social networks. In Canada, the service’s offices were closed due to accusations of risk to national security.

Moreover, the app still risks being banned in the United States, a process that could be reversed by the future president of the United States, Donald Trump. The politician signaled that he may try to lift the ban, although the process is still considered difficult.