Report: Zhang Yiming Tells ByteDance Not to Depend on External Model Distillation

The Information reported that ByteDance founder Zhang Yiming told the company’s Seed team last month that ByteDance would not rely on AI distillation, even if this temporarily left its models behind competitors. The report links the decision partly to ByteDance’s politically sensitive relationship with the U.S. government over TikTok ownership. Distillation here means training a model on outputs from a more advanced model, often developed by another company. The claim is based on sources familiar with the meeting and has not been publicly confirmed by ByteDance.