Politico: TikTok US Staff Still Use ByteDance's Lark and Aime AI Chatbot After Trump Spinoff Deal
Summary
Current and former employees tell Politico that TikTok US staff still coordinate closely with the global TikTok org and continue to use ByteDance's internal chat app Lark plus a ByteDance-built AI chatbot called Aime, with instructions not to share sensitive data treated as self-regulation. The report lands after the January 2026 closing of the Trump-brokered spinoff and undercuts the deal's premise that TikTok US would operate independently of ByteDance's infrastructure.
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"It’s unclear if the company licensed the algorithm from ByteDance, or the degree to which the algorithm is still maintained & updated by ByteDance engineers" If this was such a severe national security threat, you migh…
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Originally reported by politico.com
Read the original article →Original headline: Politico: TikTok US Staff Still Use ByteDance's Lark and Aime AI Chatbot After Trump Spinoff Deal