Social media giant parent fires intern for ‘maliciously’ interfering with AI project

TikTok parent company ByteDance has confirmed it terminated an intern over the summer for allegedly sabotaging the training of an artificial intelligence model.

The Beijing-based TikTok owner said in a social media post that it had fired an intern in August for “maliciously” interfering with the training of what it referred to as a research project, but said a report claiming that the intern’s actions cost the company “‘tens of millions of dollars’ is seriously exaggerated,” according to a tr