Artificial Intelligence: ByteDance's plan to dominate AI
The Chinese company behind TikTok is pouring resources into the technology. Some think it is a big gamble
During the summer of 2023, inside a converted brick warehouse in downtown Shanghai, dozens of ByteDance employees embarked on a secret mission.
The project had no name at the time and its engineers only knew they were part of the "AI innovation" unit. Their first task was to build the Chinese company's next super-app, an AI chatbot for the masses akin to OpenAI's ChatGPT.