CEO ByteDance Reminds Not To Fast Fast Fastness And Pursue AI Technology Progress

ByteDance CEO Liang Rubo warned employees at the company meeting (photo: x @yicaichina)

JAKARTA - ByteDance CEO Liang Rubo warned employees at a total company meeting on Tuesday January 30 that TikTok owners are at risk of becoming complacent and slipping into the media while facing the challenges of a new startup.

In a meeting in Singapore witnessed by ByteDance employees around the world, Liang said that the company's rapid expansion in recent years has made it less efficient, and the company is not paying enough attention to artificial intelligence technology, according to ByteDance's post on the meeting on social media.

"Our company is not sensitive enough (to new technology)," Liang said. "For example, talks about GPT did not appear in our semi-year technology review until 2023, although GPT-1 was released in 2018."

GPT refers to machine learning techniques that have provided human-like accuracy on OpenAI's ChatGPT chatbots.

ByteDance is often considered a leading company in the world in algorithms because its flagship applications such as TikTok, Douyin, and Toutiao are supported by powerful recommendation machines.

However, the company, dubbed the "App plant" for frequently releasing mobile apps, has been slow in the artificial intelligence race that disrupts the technology sector.

Other Chinese tech tycoons ranging from the founders of JD.com, Richard Liu to Chairman Tencent,factor Ma now also ask their company to be more efficient and refrain from being complacent.

Highlighting ByteDance's late start to the AI fundamental model, Liang said the company with a better model made it between 2018 and 2021.

"For many good startup teams, they are very familiar with the industry. They can quickly see every new project that appears on GitHub, and then they start looking for acquisition or partnership opportunities," he said, referring to the online repository for computer code.

Liang added ByteDance suffered from too many internal bureaucracy as the company is developing, now it will take six months to work on a project that startups can complete in one month.

ByteDance recently increased its focus on AI while attracting plugs from some businesses such as video games. The company has tested a number of AI-powered chatbots such as "Doubao" in China and "Cici" and "ChitChop" abroad.

The AI ByteDance strategy came into the spotlight last month after The Verge reported that the company used OpenAI technology to develop its own AI.

Although ByteDance said the use of OpenAI services was legal, OpenAI suspended ByteDance's account in research.