ByteDance’s Other AI Chatbot Is Quietly Gaining Traction Around the World

ByteDance, Guardian The company behind TikTok, currently the most popular AI chatbot in China: wash up. The app, which launched in 2023, has risen to the top of the country’s generative AI market, reaching more than 157 million monthly active users by August, according to Chinese analytics firm QuestMobile.

But what is less known is that Dubao also has a foreign counterpart: Siki. It was released around the same time and featured an almost identical female cartoon avatar as its app icon, except with longer hair than Siki’s Dobao. The app is region-locked and not available in China or the US, which explains why it’s even more obscure than Doubao.

But ByteDance has been quietly marketing Cici to users in the United Kingdom, Mexico and various Southeast Asian countries. Meta’s Ad Library shows that Cici was running more than 400 different ads in Mexico in October, most of which boasted about the model’s ability to solve math problems and that it was completely free to use. It is currently running advertising campaigns in the UK and the Philippines. On TikTok, creators from those countries shared dozens of sponsored videos about Cici using hashtags like #ciciai.

Thanks to that marketing push, downloads of the Cici app have increased significantly recently. In markets including Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Mexico and the United Kingdom, the app ranked among the top 20 downloaded free apps on the Google Play Store for the past three months, according to data from Sensor Tower, a market intelligence firm. For example, in Mexico, Ciki has been the most downloaded free app on the Google Play Store every day for the past week. In the UK on Thursday, Sicky was the ninth-most popular free app in Apple’s App Store.

Cici has barely mentioned its relationship with ByteDance anywhere in the app or on its website, but the Chinese company has previously confirmed control of the app. to Forbes in 2024. According to Cici Disclosure of Privacy PolicyIt relies on technology from other ByteDance-owned platforms, such as photo editor PicPic and coding assistant Coze. But when it comes to generating text, it uses OpenAI’s GPT and Google’s Gemini—not ByteDance’s proprietary large language model. (ByteDance did not respond to Wired’s request for comment.)

Cici’s mobile app design also looks similar to Doubao. Users can chat with the AI ​​using text or audio, create and analyze images, and try out autonomous agents created by other users. But Cici is less advanced than Doubao in terms of multi-modal and social features: it lacks the ability to create music and video content, and users cannot share their creations directly on the platform.

Since the launch of TikTok, ByteDance has struggled to create another app with the same global impact. Cici’s international influence is still far from Doubao’s domestic dominance, but it shows the company is steadily making inroads and is willing to spend on new user acquisition. But without Chinese internet regulations blocking competition from Western AI players, ByteDance will have to go head-to-head with OpenAI, Anthropic and Google.