[ByteDance Restricts Employee Access to Personal Claude and Codex Accounts; Hong Dingkun: We Don't Rely on Banning Competitors to Promote Our AI] Beating AI News reports that ByteDance plans to significantly restrict access to internal data from external AI tools such as Claude and Codex starting in November. According to an internally circulated notice, external AI access to the company's L4-level code repository and Lark Docs will be prohibited, with some exceptions for Seed. AI accounts purchased by individual employees will also be unable to access these restricted contents. The new rule has sparked internal discussion. ByteDance's Vice President of Technology, Hong Dingkun, responded, "The consequences of leaks at L3 and above levels are very serious." However, he also emphasized that promoting their own products doesn't require forcing employees to use other options by prohibiting them, "because that's 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 because employees were using personal accounts, resulting in business data being stored in those accounts. [Original Link]