ByteDance Seeks $1.1 Million in Damages from Intern Over Alleged AI Sabotage

ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, is suing a former intern for $1.1 million over allegations that he intentionally sabotaged the company’s artificial intelligence (AI) infrastructure. The case, filed in Beijing’s Haidian District People’s Court, has sparked significant attention in China, particularly within the rapidly evolving AI sector.

The lawsuit targets Tian Keyu, a postgraduate student from Peking University, who ByteDance claims manipulated code and made unauthorized changes to its large language model (LLM) training tasks. According to an internal ByteDance memo reported by the state-owned Legal Weekly, these actions disrupted the company's AI model training efforts.

ByteDance is seeking 8 million yuan (roughly $1.1 million) in damages from the former intern, a legal action that is unusual given the typically smaller scope of disputes involving interns. The case has captured public interest due to its connection to the high-stakes world of generative AI, a technology used to generate text, images, and other outputs from large datasets.

ByteDance declined to provide further comments on the lawsuit. Tian, who was dismissed in August after the alleged incident, has not responded to inquiries from the media.

ByteDance did address rumors that the sabotage had led to millions of dollars in losses and involved over 8,000 graphics processing units (GPUs), dismissing these claims as “seriously exaggerated” in a social media post last October.