ByteDance restricts employees from using personal Claude and Codex accounts; Hong Dingkun: We don't promote our own AI by banning competitors.

Beating AI News Flash: ByteDance plans to broadly restrict access to internal data by external AI tools such as Claude and Codex starting in November. According to an internal notice circulating, company-wide L4-level code repositories and Feishu documents will be prohibited from external AI access, with some Seed scenarios as exceptions. AI accounts purchased personally by employees will also no longer be usable to access these restricted contents.

The new rule has sparked discussion internally. ByteDance Technology Vice President Hong Dingkun responded, saying, "Once L3 and above content is leaked, the consequences are very serious." But he also emphasized that promoting the company's own products does not require forcing employees to use them by banning other options, "because that would be very ineffective."

This is not the first time ByteDance has tightened restrictions on external AI tools. In May 2025, the company restricted the use of third-party tools such as Cursor and Windsurf after employees used personal accounts, causing business data to accumulate in personal accounts.