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China’s ByteDance Releases Doubao 2.0 AI Model for 'Agent Era’

This picture taken on February 5, 2026 shows advertising promoting ByteDance's cloud and AI service platform 'Volcano Engine' and chatbot 'Doubao' at the Beijing Capital International airport in Beijing. (Photo by Adek BERRY / AFP)
This picture taken on February 5, 2026 shows advertising promoting ByteDance's cloud and AI service platform 'Volcano Engine' and chatbot 'Doubao' at the Beijing Capital International airport in Beijing. (Photo by Adek BERRY / AFP)
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China’s ByteDance Releases Doubao 2.0 AI Model for 'Agent Era’

This picture taken on February 5, 2026 shows advertising promoting ByteDance's cloud and AI service platform 'Volcano Engine' and chatbot 'Doubao' at the Beijing Capital International airport in Beijing. (Photo by Adek BERRY / AFP)
This picture taken on February 5, 2026 shows advertising promoting ByteDance's cloud and AI service platform 'Volcano Engine' and chatbot 'Doubao' at the Beijing Capital International airport in Beijing. (Photo by Adek BERRY / AFP)

China's ByteDance has rolled out its Doubao 2.0 model, an upgrade of the country's most widely used artificial-intelligence app, the company said on Saturday.

ByteDance is one of several Chinese firms hoping to generate overseas and domestic buzz around its new AI models during the Lunar New Year holiday, which starts on Sunday, when hundreds of millions of Chinese partake in family gatherings in their hometowns.

The company, like rival Alibaba, was caught off-guard by DeepSeek's meteoric rise to global fame during last year's Spring Festival, when Silicon Valley and investors worldwide were ⁠shocked by how ⁠a Chinese firm had come up with a model comparable to OpenAI's best but seemingly developed at a fraction of the cost.

The release of Doubao 2.0, ahead of a highly anticipated new DeepSeek model, is likely aimed at preventing such a scenario from repeating itself, Reuters reported.

A video-generation AI model that ByteDance released on Thursday, Seedance 2.0, has already drawn comparisons with DeepSeek's success last year after going ⁠viral on Chinese social media and drawing praise overseas on platforms like X, including from its owner Elon Musk.

Doubao 2.0 is positioned for the "agent era", where AI models are expected to execute complex real-world tasks rather than only answer questions, ByteDance said in a statement.

The model's pro version includes complex reasoning and multi-step task execution capabilities that match OpenAI's GPT 5.2 and Google's Gemini 3 Pro, while reducing usage costs by roughly an order of magnitude, according to the company.

"This cost advantage will become even more crucial as real-world, complex tasks involve large-scale inference and multi-step generation that will expend a huge amount of ⁠tokens," ByteDance said, ⁠referring to the unit of data processed by an AI model.

Doubao leads all AI chatbot apps in China with 155 million weekly active users, with DeepSeek second at 81.6 million, according to information provider QuestMobile's most recent data, published in late December.

But Doubao 2.0's release could help ByteDance fend off recent pressure from domestic competitors. Alibaba on February 6 announced it was spending 3 billion yuan ($400 million) on a coupon giveaway campaign to attract more users to its Qwen AI app, allowing them to use the incentives to purchase food and drink directly in the chatbot.

This led daily active users on Qwen to skyrocket from 7 million to 58 million, just 23 million shy of Doubao's figures on the same day, according to QuestMobile.

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Technology

EU Top Court to Rule on Record 4.1 bn Euro Google Fine

A pedestrian walks past the Google offices in London, Britain, August 14, 2025. (Reuters)
A pedestrian walks past the Google offices in London, Britain, August 14, 2025. (Reuters)
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EU Top Court to Rule on Record 4.1 bn Euro Google Fine

A pedestrian walks past the Google offices in London, Britain, August 14, 2025. (Reuters)
A pedestrian walks past the Google offices in London, Britain, August 14, 2025. (Reuters)

The EU's top court will decide Thursday whether to uphold a record 4.1 billion euro ($4.7 billion) fine the bloc slapped on Google for anti-competitive practices related to its Android operating system.

It is the second attempt by the US tech giant to overturn the penalty imposed by the European Commission in 2018 -- which remains the bloc's highest ever antitrust fine, said AFP.

The commission, the EU's antitrust regulator, had accused Google of abusing the popularity of its Android operating system to restrict competition.

It alleged Google pressured phone makers using Android to pre-install its search engine and Google Chrome browser -- essentially shutting out rivals -- and ordered it to pay a 4.3-billion-euro fine.

The findings were upheld in 2022 by the General Court, the EU's second-highest. But the Luxembourg-based body slightly reduced the levy to 4.1 billion euros -- still the EU's biggest ever.

Google filed a new challenge arguing before the bloc's top court, the European Court of Justice, that the case was unfounded and that the sanction penalized innovation.

In first instance, the firm had pushed the case that the EU was unfairly blind to practices by Apple, which gives preference to its own services, such as Safari on iPhones.

It also argued that customers were in no way forced to use its products on Android and that downloading competing apps was just a tap away.

But it suffered a legal blow in June last year when the EU top court's adviser recommended upholding the fine in an opinion, describing Google's arguments as "ineffective".

- Legal battles -

Although not binding, such advice carries weight and is often followed by EU judges in their rulings.

The case is one in a series pitting Google against Brussels.

As part of a major push to target big tech abuses, the EU slapped the Mountain View company with fines worth a total of 8.2 billion euros between 2017 and 2019 over antitrust violations.

This set off a series of long-running legal battles.

Brussels has since armed itself with a more powerful legal weapon known as the Digital Markets Act (DMA), to rein in tech giants.

Rather than regulators discovering antitrust violations after probes lasting many years, the DMA gives businesses a list of what they can and cannot do online.

Google is already the subject of several formal DMA probes, and was hit with a massive 2.95 billion euro fine in September in another competition case predating the digital law for favoring its own advertising services.

That drew an angry rebuke from US President Donald Trump who has accused Brussels of unfairly targeting American firms, and repeatedly threatened to impose retaliatory tariffs on EU exports.

Technology

Sony Says to Stop Releasing PlayStation Games on Discs

French PlayStation' collector Cyril, poses with a PlayStaion 1, at his home in Vraiville, on November 20, 2024. (AFP)
French PlayStation' collector Cyril, poses with a PlayStaion 1, at his home in Vraiville, on November 20, 2024. (AFP)
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Sony Says to Stop Releasing PlayStation Games on Discs

French PlayStation' collector Cyril, poses with a PlayStaion 1, at his home in Vraiville, on November 20, 2024. (AFP)
French PlayStation' collector Cyril, poses with a PlayStaion 1, at his home in Vraiville, on November 20, 2024. (AFP)

Sony said Wednesday that it would stop releasing new video games for the PlayStation on disc in January 2028 following a shift in consumer preferences.

"Following this date, new games will be available on PlayStation Store and at retailers in digital formats only," the company said on its official PlayStation blog.

Sony said the upcoming shift "has no impact on games that already released, or will be releasing, prior to January 2028 in disc format."

The announcement comes as the upcoming exclusively digital release of "Grand Theft Auto VI", which is predicted to become the biggest-selling cultural product of all time, has caused some consternation among gamers.

There was grumbling on social media that the lack of a physical disc would eliminate any second-hand market for the title.

"This is a natural direction for Sony Interactive Entertainment to adapt to consumer trends as the general preference for digital media significantly outpaces physical discs," the company said.

"We remain committed to delivering a world-class gaming experience to our fans," it added.

Technology

Fear and Anger Brew Inside Meta amid AI Frenzy

The word "Hack" is seen in this aerial view of Meta's corporate headquarter offices in Menlo Park, California. JOSH EDELSON / AFP
The word "Hack" is seen in this aerial view of Meta's corporate headquarter offices in Menlo Park, California. JOSH EDELSON / AFP
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Fear and Anger Brew Inside Meta amid AI Frenzy

The word "Hack" is seen in this aerial view of Meta's corporate headquarter offices in Menlo Park, California. JOSH EDELSON / AFP
The word "Hack" is seen in this aerial view of Meta's corporate headquarter offices in Menlo Park, California. JOSH EDELSON / AFP

A frenzied push for artificial intelligence dominance comes with a different kind of cost for Meta, where massive layoffs, employee surveillance and departures have fueled reports of a heated internal climate.

As Meta spends billions annually to build out its AI capabilities, employees at Facebook, Instagram and WhatsApp are increasingly unhappy with their Mark Zuckerberg-led parent company, AFP reported.

Meta employees have weathered frequent layoffs since early 2025, including this spring when the company cut 10 percent of its workforce -- some 8,000 jobs -- and reshuffled another 7,000 employees.

For those who remain, an internal AI training initiative has drawn accusations of surveillance.

The company also underwent a major reorganization of its AI research division, into which Zuckerberg, Meta's founder and chief executive, has poured billions of dollars.

The malaise stands in stark contrast to Meta's robust finances -- driven by advertising, which makes up nearly 98 percent of its revenue. In the first three months of 2026, Meta's net income rose to more than $26 billion.

However, the bill for its AI investments is also exploding, prompting Zuckerberg, who has near-absolute power over the company, to impose sweeping cuts and increased monitoring of employees in the name of efficiency and savings.

The cuts are funding a massive race for infrastructure: Meta plans to spend up to $145 billion on AI investments this year, nearly twice last year's figure.

Harvesting data

After thousands of employees were reassigned to Meta's AI division, some, speaking anonymously to US media, have complained of "mind-numbing" tasks designed to train machines, or even automate away their own jobs.

That controversial program, called the Model Capability Initiative, was rolled out in April and suspended on June 22. It captured clicks, keystrokes and browsing activity of US employees to train AI agents -- software capable of independently performing tasks.

Zuckerberg, who has made AI the company's North Star, defended the program during an internal meeting: "AI models learn by watching really smart people do things," he said, according to Wired.

But the tool sparked a revolt. More than 1,600 employees signed a petition calling for it to end, with some likening the company to a "data extraction factory," according to media reports.

The pause came after private conversations, and performance data inadvertently became accessible to all staff. The system risked drawing the attention of European regulators, since it captured exchanges between employees on both continents.

In a statement to AFP Tuesday, a Meta spokesperson said the program was designed with privacy safeguards.

"While we have no indication at this time that any data was improperly accessed by Meta employees, we're pausing it while we investigate," the statement said.

One employee summed up the mood with a meme from "The Office," posted on an internal company forum, reading: "0 days since our last nonsense."

'Dead end quest'

All of these efforts aim to make up for a persistent lag behind Google, OpenAI and Anthropic, which dominate the race for cutting-edge AI models. Meta's own models, repeatedly delayed, have proved disappointing even internally.

To regain ground, Zuckerberg invested over $14 billion last year into Scale AI, a San Francisco-based startup, and poached its CEO Alexandr Wang -- who was 28 years old at the time -- to run a "superintelligence" lab inside Meta.

The expensive bet has yet to win people over. Several key figures have since walked out, among them Yann LeCun, considered one of the "godfathers" of modern AI, who had led Meta's AI research since 2013.

LeCun suddenly found himself reporting to Wang, more than 35 years his junior. He left Meta at the end of 2025 to launch his own startup.

In an interview with the Financial Times, the Turing Award winner lamented that, although "he learns fast," Wang has "no experience with research" and was on "a dead end" quest.

The stakes for Meta go beyond its social networks now. The company is also doubling down on consumer electronics with smart glasses and is considering a new prediction-market app called Arena, potentially in partnership with Polymarket and Kalshi, according to The New York Times.

Lawsuits also threaten to consume time and resources.

For the first time, a Los Angeles jury in March found Meta liable for the effects of social media addiction, just one day after a separate ruling in New Mexico said Meta had failed to protect minors.

Meta has appealed, but more lawsuits are expected this year.