TikTok father or mother ByteDance mentioned that its use of OpenAI’s expertise to help the event of its personal synthetic intelligence (AI) fashions was in compliance with the US agency’s service phrases, refuting a declare that it made use of the expertise to construct a rival service.

ByteDance made the clarification on Sunday after a report by a US expertise outlet, citing inside sources, alleged that the Chinese brief video large stealthily used OpenAI’s expertise to develop its personal giant language mannequin (LLM), whereas attempting to cowl its observe by way of “data desensitisation.”

In a press release to the South China Morning Post on Sunday, ByteDance acknowledged that when the agency began exploring LLMs earlier this 12 months, a small group of its engineers used OpenAI’s API service in an experimental mannequin that was by no means meant to be publicly launched.

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

Its engineering staff nonetheless makes use of OpenAI’s API alongside another third-party fashions “to a very limited extent during the evaluation/testing process, such as score benchmarking”, in keeping with the Beijing-based agency.

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

However, OpenAI mentioned that it has suspended ByteDance’s entry to its service.

“While ByteDance’s use of our API was minimal, we have suspended their account while we further investigate”, the Microsoft-backed start-up mentioned in a press release despatched to the Verge. “If we discover that their usage doesn’t follow these policies, we will ask them to make necessary changes or terminate their account.”

OpenAI has not made its service formally obtainable in mainland China, which is in a heated race with the US for worldwide AI dominance.

ByteDance’s alleged leverage of OpenAI’s expertise to construct its personal mannequin comes after AI specialist Lee Kai-fu’s new enterprise 01.AI was accused of copying Meta Platforms’ Llama’s structure in its Yi-34B LLM, in keeping with a submit printed on the open supply group Huggingface. The allegation sparked heated debate on the time, with some questioning the ingenuity of Chinese AI start-ups.

Ever since OpenAI launched ChatGPT powered by its GPT 3.5 mannequin in November final 12 months, Chinese tech corporations have tried to journey the wave of generative AI to launch rival merchandise in a bid to catch up. However, the launch of OpenAI’s GPT-4 Turbo mannequin early final month is predicted to additional lengthen its lead towards Chinese rivals, trade insiders and analysts have mentioned.

Meanwhile, China has seen explosive progress within the variety of LLMs being developed. Up to July this 12 months, at the least 130 LLMs had been launched by native tech corporations and analysis institutes, prompting tech moguls together with Baidu’s founder and CEO Robin Li to say the nation has too many foundational AI fashions, which was “a huge waste of resources”.