Dhiren Kharat

PGP/23/020

ByteDance Beyond China:

Leveraging Consumer Artificial Intelligence (AI)

1. What role does AI play in ByteDance’s Toutiao and TikTok products? Is it different?
How does AI create value for consumers of these products?
Ans: The data generated by both man and machine currently far exceeds the ability of
humans to consume, analyse, and make rational choices based on that evidence. Artificial
intelligence builds the basis for all machine learning and is the foundation of all complicated
decision-making. Computers are highly efficient in measuring combinations and
permutations to make the right choice. AI and its logical machine learning evolution, deep
learning is the fundamental future of businesses
TikTok is an app that enables young people, to satisfy their pleasant hidden desires
by making a variety of videos ranging from various fun challenges to dancing, magic tricks
and funny videos. TikTok's A I algorithms learn human desires easily. They capture both the
user's "likes" and feedback, and record the length of each video being viewed. This helps
TikTok understand user preferences and keep them engaged for more amount of time.
Toutiao uses artificial intelligence to use its partner sites to gather and curate daily
news and articles for users. Via the machine-learning algorithm of the app, Toutiao will
understand its user and customise information for each user, thus providing a unique
customer experience. Toutiao has been able to attract the young people, who are more
interested in entertainment, through the use of attention grabbing and latest information.
AI creates value for both the customers via providing them the content they like and
relate to more. This helps users as they get access to more content which is more suitable to
their choice.

2. How difficult is it for competitors to imitate the success of Toutiao and TikTok? Which
companies are likely to compete, and how?
 Ans: The imitation of such apps can be and is being done currently by various
companies. The main factors to consider are:
o AI Algorithm
o Sufficient Marketing
o Focussing on early adopters
o Chinese Aversion
o Deep pockets
o Regulations
 Most of the points mentioned above fail to create a blue ocean strategy for apps
such as TikTok or Toutiao. AI algorithms can easily be imitated as companies such as
Facebook, Instagram and Amazon have already mastered this division and achieved
significant feat in this area.
 The top competitors for these apps can be In-shorts, Instagram Reels, YouTube
Shorts, Facebook Lasso and Byte App. With the recent inclusion of Instagram Reels, it
has become more interactive and attention grabbing.
 So, it can be concluded that the App which has already created a userbase such as
Facebook or Instagram or even Twitter and Amazon can easily enter into this “short
Video form” entertainment can become competitors soon given their technological
expertise and deep pockets.

3. What new application should ByteDance build using its AI capabilities? What value
does AI provide there?
Ans: ByteDance’s AI-Powered Products is most well-known for Toutiao, literally
translated as news. It is also referred to as BuzzFeed with brains. In past years, artificial
intelligence has grown into a prominent catch phrase across several industries. AI is so
famous that it is expected that leading tech funds will invest almost thrice what they do
now into AI until 2022.
 As leading tech firms continue to show interest in AI investment, people
continued to see the incorporation of the technology into more and more
products and applications. Although AI technology has seen useful
 implementations in the healthcare, education, and finance industries, one of the
most promising areas for AI is provided by the mobile app development industry.
 The next few ventures that ByteDance can focus on due to their vast experience
in leveraging AI tech are:
o Facilitating Voice assistants
o Health tech start-ups (AI support)
o Fintech Start-ups (AI support)
o Digitalizing organizations
o AI as a service
o Developing AI based Navigation tools
 All of the ventures given above have a lot of similarity to the functioning of
ByteDance. Hence if they had to venture into one then there won’t be any need
to adopt a drastic change.
 The company can always keep experimenting at the edge to find out new
opportunities or it can surely re-invent itself at roots to become a completely
new service provider kind of a company.
 Hence, they must consider to broaden their horizon and mostly try to enter the
service business due to immense business expertise and acumen in the particular
sector.

4. What should ByteDance/TikTok do in response to government fines/bans? Can

ByteDance find a way to censor its content to the satisfaction of government? What
other solutions are possible?
Ans: Governments from countries such as India and Unites States of America have
banned apps such as TikTok owing to data security issue that these Apps frequent. The
problem lies with the laws pertaining to the rule of People’s Republic of China, which
states that all Chinese apps must provide their user data to Chinese Government as pre
legal obligation.
 TikTok retains the standard level of intrusive app access; it may theoretically be
used by the Chinese intelligence services as a gateway to track individual users or
collect sensitive information.
 Apart from that these apps also pose a social issue of promoting sexual assaults,
animal cruelty and aggression (Abusive behaviour) to an audience as young as 14
years old.
 Also, the app had a wide userbase that had a demographic of living in rural areas
of developing countries such as India. The app was also being used to promote
Social evils and Criminal activities
 The steps that TikTok can take is privatization of data which means that sign a
contractual agreement with governments to divert all the traffic and data
through secure indigenous servers. These servers can be maintained and
monitored by Government trusted companies.
 Next step would to develop a strong no tolerance policy against copyright and
sexual content. Also, the videos uploaded should undergo a strict scrutiny by
detects criminal activities or unlawful activities.
 This can be done with the help of AI and reinforcement learning with the help of
intervention.
 ByteDance must help governments understand the economical implication of
such actions because these apps also bring a lot of inflow of investment along
with creation of huge employment. Along with this the app has also provided
voices to the backward people to showcase their simple skills an put forth their
talents.
 Thus, ByteDance must leverage its current capacity of AI and put it to good use to
gain confidence of governments and help recreate the employment the app
previously generated.