China’s ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, has filed a lawsuit seeking $1.1 million in damages from a former intern, accusing him of deliberately sabotaging its artificial intelligence infrastructure.
The lawsuit, which has attracted significant attention in China amid the ongoing AI race, was filed in the Haidian District People’s Court in Beijing. ByteDance is seeking 8 million yuan ($1.1 million) from Tian Keyu, a postgraduate student at Peking University, according to a report from the state-owned Legal Weekly.
While legal disputes between companies and employees are not uncommon in China, the scale of this lawsuit—targeting an intern for such a substantial sum—is unusual and has sparked widespread interest.
The case centers on ByteDance’s AI large language model training infrastructure, a key technology in the rapidly advancing field of generative AI, which is used to produce text, images, and other content from large datasets.
According to Legal Weekly, ByteDance alleges that Tian intentionally disrupted the company’s AI model training by manipulating code and making unauthorized changes to the system.
The company reportedly dismissed Tian in August, and while there were rumors that the incident caused millions of dollars in losses and affected over 8,000 graphics processing units (GPUs), ByteDance has dismissed these claims as “seriously exaggerated.”
The case has drawn particular attention due to its focus on AI, a sector that has become a hotbed of competition and innovation globally.
