TikTok owner ByteDance hires prominent talent from start-ups in long-term commitment to AI

ByteDance, the owner of TikTok and its Chinese sibling Douyin, is furthering plans to boost its research capabilities in large language models (LLMs), the technology used to develop generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) tools like ChatGPT, as the firm’s recent efforts begin to bear fruit.

The company has added at least two prominent AI experts to its technology team focused on language and graphics model development.

Huang Wenhao, a Microsoft alumnus, last worked as vice-president at 01.AI, a GenAI start-up founded by venture capitalist and former Google China president Lee Kai-fu. The other new hire, Qin Yujia, was the founder and chief executive of start-up Seq-AI. Qin graduated with a PhD from Tsinghua University, where he focused on LLMs under his adviser Liu Zhiyuan, who co-founded the AI start-up ModelBest in 2022.

ByteDance has drawn up long-term plans to enhance LLM-related research, according to a person familiar with the matter, who requested anonymity because they are not authorised to speak to the media. But the person added that the company has no current plans to form an independent LLM research organisation, contrary to earlier Chinese media reports.

ByteDance did not immediately respond to a request for comment on Wednesday.

The Beijing-based company has elevated GenAI as one of its priorities since US start-up OpenAI shook the tech world with the launch of ChatGPT in late 2022.

Early last year, ByteDance appointed TikTok’s technology lead Zhu Wenjia to oversee AI model developments, according to Chinese media reports. Kelly Zhang Nan stepped down as CEO of Douyin in February this year to focus on CapCut, a video-editing app that now includes GenAI features.

Initial efforts appear to have paid off. CapCut recorded over 38 million downloads in July, while ByteDance’s AI chatbot Doubao achieved more than 27 million downloads, outperforming ChatGPT, according to a report from Unique Capital.

The company has also been on a hiring spree for AI professionals.

A search for the term “LLM” on ByteDance’s career website on Wednesday yielded more than 600 openings. Last month, the firm announced a recruitment programme targeting PhD graduates, particularly those in the fields of robotics and cybersecurity, to further advance the company’s search and recommendation capabilities.

ByteDance, which attributes the success of TikTok and Douyin partly to its AI-powered content recommendation system, views AI as a battle that the company cannot afford to lose, the Post reported in February.

In January, ByteDance chief executive Liang Rubo berated employees for being too slow to react to the emergence of new technologies such as GenAI. Employees did not start discussing ChatGPT until months after the launch of ChatGPT, Liang said at the time.

New joiner Huang, in charge of technical project management and planning, now reports directly to Zhu, while Qin reports to Zhu’s subordinate Qiao Mu.

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