ByteDance

ByteDance is a technology company that owns and operates machine learning content platforms that allow users to connect in communities, create and share contents.

Zhang Yiming founded ByteDance on March 9, 2012 in Beijing, China. Its flagship product is Toutiao, an artificial intelligence powered platform delivering personalized content recommendations for its users. It also operates a series of products for mobile users including Topbuzz, Flipagram and other user-generated content short-form video applications.

ByteDance acquired musical.ly, a global video community that celebrates creativity through the combination of short videos and music. In August 2018, ByteDance merged musical.ly into their product, TikTok, which initially launched in May 2017, to provide a unified user experience between both platforms. Other social media applications they operate include Helo, Douyin, BaBe, Huoshan Video and Lark.

It was reported in December 2018 that ByteDance is in talks to raise about $1.45 billion (9.97billion yuan) to invest in artificial intelligence and media content.

In early 2020, it was announced that ByteDance and TikTok had built the technology to allow users to insert their face into videos starring someone else, known as a Face Swap or deepfake technology. The code in both TikTok and Chinese sister app Douyin asks users to take a mulit-angle biometric scan of their face and then add their face to the video they want to share.