According to the Southern Metropolis Daily, the Haidian District People's Court in Beijing has officially accepted ByteDance's lawsuit against former intern Tian XX. The company accuses Tian of tampering with code to attack the company's internal model training and requests the court to order Tian to compensate for infringement damages of 8 million yuan and reasonable expenses of 20,000 yuan, while also demanding a public apology.
It is reported that in October 2024, some media outlets claimed that ByteDance's large model training tasks were attacked by an intern, with rumors stating "involving over 8,000 cards, with losses exceeding 10 million dollars." ByteDance later released a clarification announcement through its official account, confirming that an intern had committed serious violations and was dismissed in August 2024. The announcement also pointed out that the affected tasks were related to a research project within the company's commercialization technology team, which did not impact official projects or online business, and that the rumors of "involving over 8,000 cards and losses exceeding 10 million dollars" were grossly exaggerated.
In a report released on November 5 by ByteDance's Corporate Discipline and Professional Ethics Committee, further details of the incident were disclosed. The report indicated that from June to July 2024, former intern Tian XX maliciously attacked the model training tasks of the team's research project by writing and modifying code due to dissatisfaction with the distribution of team resources, resulting in resource loss. The company has terminated its internship agreement with Tian and reported the situation to the Sunshine Integrity Alliance, the Corporate Anti-Fraud Alliance, and the school he attends.
ByteDance chose to initiate legal action at this time because Tian, as a current doctoral student, was first handled by the school after his dismissal. However, during the incident handling period, Tian repeatedly denied involvement, claiming that it was other interns who attacked the model training tasks. Given that Tian did not recognize his mistakes and that his actions violated the company's security red line, ByteDance decided to sue in court to demonstrate the company's serious attitude towards such incidents and to prevent similar events from occurring in the future.