Why the secret AI sauce behind TikTok is such a vital ingredient in luring potential buyers

ByteDance has long been a proponent of content recommendation systems, and uses it on other products, such as the popular news aggregator Jinri Toutiao

Reading Time:4 minutes

US President Donald Trump said he has told people involved in the sale of the US assets of ByteDance's TikTok that the deal must be struck by Sept. 15. Photo: Bloomberg

Published: 5:30am, 7 Sep 2020Updated: 4:10pm, 15 Oct 2020

When ByteDance rebranded the US teen karaoke app Musical.ly it acquired as TikTok in 2018, it was just another short video app for American teens.

Today it is the most downloaded app in the world, proving so popular that it has become a flashpoint in the escalating US-China tech war, which was previously focused on heavy-duty areas such as chips and 5G networks.

Washington has demanded a forced divestment of TikTok in the US from its Chinese owner ByteDance on concerns over the safety of personal data. But updated export controls from Beijing last week – which cover two key technologies used by the short video app – have cast an added shroud of uncertainty over the sale.

Among the newly-added export restrictions – the first time China has updated such rules in over a decade – are “personalised information push technologies based on data analysis” and “artificial intelligence interactive interfaces”.

Both of these tools are used to build ByteDance’s powerful recommendation system, which feeds curated content to users based on their interests and activity. While Musical.ly may have given ByteDance a foothold in the US market, it was the secret sauce – its algorithm – that allowed it to build momentum.

Ever since its formation in 2012, ByteDance has been a proponent of content recommendation systems, and uses it on other products such as the popular news aggregator Jinri Toutiao. TikTok takes into account three elements to build a recommendation: user interaction on the app, such as liking a clip or following an account; what the content contains – in short videos, things like sounds and hashtags; and what environment the user is in, such as one’s language preference, country setting, and device type, according to information revealed by TikTok in June.