TikTok owner ByteDance says use of OpenAI technology in compliance with service terms

TikTok parent ByteDance said that its use of OpenAI’s technology to aid the development of its own artificial intelligence (AI) models was in compliance with the US firm’s service terms, refuting a claim that it made use of the technology to build a rival service.

ByteDance made the clarification on Sunday after a report by a US technology outlet, citing internal sources, alleged that the Chinese short video giant stealthily used OpenAI’s technology to develop its own large language model (LLM), while trying to cover its track through “data desensitisation.”

In a statement to the South China Morning Post on Sunday, ByteDance acknowledged that when the firm started exploring LLMs earlier this year, a small group of its engineers used OpenAI’s API service in an experimental model that was never meant to be publicly launched.

It added that this early work was discontinued in April, after the introduction of a protocol to ensure compliance with OpenAI’s terms of use, which prohibits the use of output from its GPT products to “develop models that compete with OpenAI”.

Its engineering team still uses OpenAI’s API alongside some other third-party models “to a very limited extent during the evaluation/testing process, such as score benchmarking”, according to the Beijing-based firm.

“ByteDance is licensed to use OpenAI’s API and places great emphasis on following OpenAI’s terms of use,” it said.

However, OpenAI said that it has suspended ByteDance’s access to its service.