ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, is preparing to launch a personal artificial intelligence agent in the coming weeks as it steps up efforts to compete with leading AI companies in the United States, Bloomberg reported Wednesday.
The Chinese technology company plans to introduce an agent modeled on Meta’s Muse, with the announcement made privately during a recent all-hands meeting of its AI team, the publication reported.
ByteDance is looking to expand its AI ambitions and compete with leading US-based labs such as Anthropic and OpenAI over the next three to four years.
ByteDance’s big move
The personal AI agent being developed by ByteDance will serve a role similar to Meta’s Muse, according to Bloomberg.
An AI agent goes beyond answering questions. It can plan, make decisions and execute multiple tasks on a user’s behalf.
Meta launched Muse in September 2026 as a voice-based version of this concept. Users can speak to the assistant and receive responses through an animated avatar in real time, while the system handles tasks across different platforms.
Muse operates in a secure virtual environment and has already attracted millions of users. The chatbot has also become popular among creators in the United States.
Its capabilities extend to practical tasks such as booking travel, managing schedules and interacting with other applications.
It remains unclear whether ByteDance will introduce dedicated hardware alongside its AI agent, following Meta’s approach with smart glasses and its small Muse Charm device.
Data remains a major hurdle
Despite its ambitions, ByteDance faces challenges in developing AI models capable of competing with the leading US companies.
Co-founder Zhang Yiming has highlighted the company’s data limitations, noting that ByteDance’s Seed language models were pre-trained on datasets considerably smaller than those used by leading US AI labs.
However, Zhang wants the company to build on its strength in video generation.
ByteDance has developed its Seedance models, which are designed to generate realistic video clips. The company sees its capabilities in this area as an advantage that it can use to expand its broader AI ambitions.
Bloomberg reported that ByteDance is planning to spend $70 billion to develop Seedance into China’s leading AI video platform.
The investment plans underscore the company’s ambitions to strengthen its AI infrastructure and expand beyond its existing position in video generation.
AI competition
ByteDance’s longer-term ambitions extend beyond launching a personal AI assistant or building a leading video generation platform.
Co-founder Zhang Yiming told employees that the company could eventually compete at the frontier of AI development with Anthropic and OpenAI.
However, Zhang expects ByteDance will need until at least 2029 or 2030 to reach that level.
The planned personal AI agent would give the company an entry into an emerging market where technology companies are seeking to develop assistants capable of handling increasingly complex tasks on behalf of users.
If the launch timeline holds, ByteDance would become a significant Chinese entrant in the emerging personal AI agent market.
AI disclosure: AI tools assisted with research and drafting of this piece. An Invezz editor reviewed the facts, sources and wording before publication. Any opinions or analysis are Invezz’s, not those of an automated system.
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