Chinese company ByteDance Photo: Getty images
Chinese company ByteDance, the developer of the popular social network TikTok, has filed a lawsuit against a former intern, claiming $1.1 million in damages. The lawsuit states that the trainee deliberately attacked the company’s infrastructure for training large language models (LLMs) of artificial intelligence. This was reported by Reuters on Thursday, 28 November.
According to the Chinese state-run Legal Weekly, ByteDance has filed a lawsuit with the Haidian District People’s Court in Beijing, seeking 8 million yuan ($1.1 million) from former intern Tian Keiyu. This case has attracted public attention in China, especially in the context of fierce competition in the field of artificial intelligence.
It is noted that although litigation between companies and their employees is not uncommon in China, a lawsuit against a trainee and for such a large sum is quite unusual. In the case, which revolves around the training of large language models, the role of technologies such as ChatGPT, created by the US company OpenAI, which has been actively developing over the past two years, is widely discussed.
ByteDance announced the dismissal of Tian Keiyu in August, but added that the widespread information that his actions led to millions in losses and the destruction of more than 8,000 graphics processing units (GPUs) was greatly exaggerated.
The lawsuit claims that Tian deliberately sabotaged the work of ByteDance’s research team by modifying the source code and performing other unauthorised actions, which led to system malfunctions. The company declined to comment on the case, and Tian himself has not yet responded to journalists’ inquiries.
