The owner of TikTok has fired an intern for allegedly sabotaging an internal artificial intelligence project.

ByteDance said it fired the person in August after he “maliciously interfered” with the training of artificial intelligence (AI) models used in a research project.

Thanks to video-sharing app TikTok and its Chinese counterpart Douyin, which are among the most popular mobile apps in the world, ByteDance has become one of the world’s most important social media companies.

Like other major players in the technology sector, ByteDance has been committed to embracing generative AI. The Doubao chatbot took over from rival Baidu’s Ernie earlier this year in the race to produce a Chinese rival to OpenAI’s ChatGPT.

ByteDance has also released wireless earbuds integrated with Doubao, allowing users to interact directly with the chatbot without a mobile phone.

The company commented on the intern’s dismissal after rumors spread on Chinese social media over the weekend.

In a statement on its news aggregator service Toutiao, ByteDance said an intern in its commercial technology team had been fired for serious disciplinary violations, according to a translation.

It added that its official commercial products and its large language models, the underlying technology for generative AI, were not affected.

The company said reports and rumors on social media were exaggerated, including about the extent of the disruption. ByteDance said this included rumors that as many as 8,000 graphics processing units, the chips used to train AI models, were affected, with losses running into the tens of millions of dollars.

ByteDance said it had informed the intern’s university and industry associations about their conduct.

It comes amid scrutiny of tech companies around the world over the safety of generative AI models and the effects of social media.

ByteDance is also under particular scrutiny in the US, where it is battling a looming federal ban. The company has until January 19 to sell or close its stake in TikTok to an approved buyer. The US government says TikTok poses a threat to national security, a claim ByteDance strongly disputes.

ByteDance and TikTok were contacted for comment.