According to LatePost, ByteDance recently made significant adjustments to its AI product department, Flow. The social companionship AI product, Cat Box, has a new leader. The former head, Liang Chenqi, has left the company, and has been replaced by Xi Yuan (a pseudonym), previously the head of Star Painting.
Simultaneously, the Star Painting team, which develops AI camera and image generation applications, is slated to merge into the Doubao App, under the unified management of Doubao App's head, Lu You (a pseudonym).
Flow, headed by Zhu Jun, encompasses several products including Doubao, Cat Box, Star Painting, Doubao Aixue, and Gauthmath. This restructuring focuses on integrating Cat Box and Star Painting, which have underperformed, to concentrate resources on the core product, Doubao, aiming for faster growth.
Cat Box, launched in March 2024, competes with MiniMax's Xingye, but lags behind in daily active users (DAU). Star Painting, an AI camera and image generation app, also has significantly lower DAU than ByteDance's other similar product, Ji Meng. Notably, Ji Meng, belonging to the Jianying team, is another key AI product for ByteDance, boasting over a million DAU and aiming for even higher growth.
While both Star Painting and Ji Meng utilize base models provided by the Seed R&D team, they differ in functionality and user experience. ByteDance has consistently pursued a "saturation coverage" strategy, launching numerous AI products but yet to achieve a leading position in any single area. For instance, Doubao briefly held the top spot for DAU among domestic conversational AI products, but was quickly surpassed by competitors.
Unlike ByteDance's focus on growth, Kuaishou targets revenue with its visual generation product, Ke Ling, already achieving 100 million yuan in cumulative revenue. This highlights ByteDance's AI strategy prioritizing user scale expansion.
The adjustments to Cat Box and Star Painting signal ByteDance's facing growth pressure in its AI product line. By consolidating resources and streamlining its product structure, ByteDance aims to focus on its more promising core product, Doubao, seeking a breakthrough in the fiercely competitive market. Whether this strategic shift will drive new growth for ByteDance in the AI field remains to be seen.
