ByteDance sues former intern for alleged AI sabotage
ByteDance filed a lawsuit against a former intern in Beijing seeking USD 1.1 million in damages, alleging he deliberately sabotaged the company's large language model by manipulating code without authorization. The company stated that rumors of massive financial losses were exaggerated.
What happened
ByteDance filed a lawsuit against former intern Tian Keyu in Haidian District Court in Beijing, seeking damages of USD 1.1 million (approximately Rp 17.4 billion).
Tian, identified as a graduate student at Peking University, allegedly deliberately sabotaged ByteDance's large language model AI system by manipulating code and making unauthorized modifications.
Reported impact
ByteDance stated that rumors of the company losing millions of dollars and damage to over 8,000 GPUs were exaggerated.
Index analysis
The case drew attention within China as litigation involving large sums between a company and an intern was unprecedented, particularly given the importance of LLM training technology among Chinese tech companies.
ByteDance did not comment on the lawsuit, and Tian did not immediately respond to requests for confirmation.
Governance controls
ByteDance stated it had terminated the intern in August, prior to the October announcement of the incident on social media.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.