OpenAI temporarily suspends ByteDance's account. Here's what happened

The account will remain suspended while OpenAI ‘investigates’ ByteDance.

Published on: Dec 19, 2023, 10:58:30 IST

By HT News Desk, New Delhi

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OpenAI has temporarily suspended ByteDance's account after it was revealed that the TikTok parent was building its own large language model (LLM) using the ChatGPT-maker's technology.

An OpenAI spokesperson confirmed the suspension in a statement to The Verge, a US-based technology website that made the revelation. citing internal ByteDance documents.

“All API (application programming interface) must adhere to our usage policies to ensure that our technology is used for good. While ByteDance's use of our API was minimal; we have suspended their account while we investigate. If we discover that their usage doesn't follow these policies, we will ask them to make necessary changes or shall terminate their account,” spokesperson Niko Felix said.

What did The Verge reveal?

The Verge reported that ByteDance deployed OpenAI's API on ‘Project Seed,' the China-based tech giant's foundational LLM; the API was used at nearly every single phase of the project, including for training and evaluating the model.

Also, ByteDance employees involved in the project were well aware of the implications, going to the extent of discussing how to ‘whitewash’ the evidence of what they were doing.

Why did OpenAI suspend ByteDance's account?

This is because the latter was in violation of OpenAI's terms of service, which state clearly that its model output ‘can’t be used to develop any artificial intelligence models that compete with our products and services.’

Microsoft, OpenAI's largest investor and through which ByteDance gained its OpenAI access, follows the same policy as the San Francisco-based artificial intelligence (AI) research firm.

Also, using someone else's technology to build your own model, is generally considered a ‘faux pas’ in the AI world, the website said.

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HT News Desk
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