BEIJING (Feb 14): China's ByteDance has rolled out its Doubao 2.0 model, an upgrade of the country's most widely used artificial intelligence (AI) app, the company said on Saturday. 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. 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. But Doubao 2.0's release could help ByteDance fend off recent pressure from domestic competitors.

Source: The Edge Markets February 14, 2026 09:42 UTC