ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming rules out AI distillation

According to The Information, ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming told the Seed team in July that the company won't rely on AI distillation to improve its models, even if it falls behind competitors. Distillation uses outputs from more advanced models, often built by other companies, to train AI.

Sources say the decision is influenced by ByteDance's complex relationship with the U.S. government over TikTok ownership. Anthropic has accused DeepSeek, Moonshot, MiniMax, Zhipu, and Alibaba of distilling its Claude model, but ByteDance wasn't accused and has kept a low profile.