In today’s issue of Command Line, I reported that ByteDance has been violating the developer license of both Microsoft and OpenAI by using GPT-generated data to train its own, competing model in China.

After my report was published, OpenAI spokesperson Niko Felix sent the following statement confirming that ByteDance’s account has been suspended:

All API customers must adhere to our usage policies to ensure that our technology is used for good. While ByteDance’s use of our API was minimal, we have suspended their account while we further investigate. If we discover that their usage doesn’t follow these policies, we will ask them to make necessary changes or terminate their account.

As I reported, most of ByteDance’s GPT usage has been done through Microsoft’s Azure platform, not through OpenAI directly. I’ve asked Microsoft if it will follow OpenAI and suspend ByteDance’s access as well.