According to reports, ByteDance is making TikTok’s AI technology available for other companies to use in their own services.
A Financial Times report this week describes how ByteDance – TikTok’s parent company – has launched a new division called BytePlus, which sells TikTok’s technology to third parties that want to use it.
This includes things like the platform’s recommendation algorithm, computer vision technology, real-time effects, and even automated translations, among others.
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The new division is set up in Singapore but also has offices in Hong Kong and London, and already has a few customers, like sneaker platform GOAT, WeGo, a travel metasearch engine from Singapore, Indonesian online shopping company Chilibeli, and others.
According to its website, BytePlus offers services like AI-powered translation, real-time video effects, gaming analytics, data testing, insights, and ByteDances’s product recommendations algorithm – the same algorithm powering TikTok’s “For You.”
The latter, which “recommends content by ranking videos based on a combination of factors” takes into consideration users’ interests, and adjusts for things they are not interested in, their interaction with content, video information (i.e. captions and hashtags), language preferences, country settings, and even device type.
Furthermore, it also looks at how long users view any content, and what videos they finish watching.
Although we don’t have an official announcement from ByteDance, we know that this move is a pretty sound business decision, and could help ByteDance keep its revenue flowing as its growth eventually fizzles out.