Politico: TikTok US Staff Still Use ByteDance's Lark and Aime AI Chatbot After Trump Spinoff Deal

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.