China’s ByteDance, the parent company behind TikTok, has released Doubao 2.0, the latest version of its AI chatbot, as competition intensifies in the country’s fast-moving AI sector and the company faces allegations from Disney over a separate video-generation model.

The update was announced on February 14, ahead of the Lunar New Year holiday, a period when Chinese technology companies often seek to capture public attention as hundreds of millions of people travel and spend time online. 

Doubao 2.0 is positioned by ByteDance as a model designed for what it calls the “agent era”, in which AI systems are expected to perform complex, multi-step tasks rather than simply respond to prompts. The company said the pro version of the model offers advanced reasoning and task execution capabilities comparable to leading systems developed by OpenAI and Google, while reducing usage costs significantly, according to a recent report by Reuters.

The release comes as Chinese AI companies seek to avoid a repeat of last year’s surprise rise of DeepSeek, whose model gained global attention and was widely compared to top US systems. Deepseek is also expected to launch a new AI model with strong coding capabilities in February, according to an earlier report by The Information.

According to data from the research firm QuestMobile published in December, Doubao had 155 million weekly active users in China, compared with 81.6 million for DeepSeek. 

Separately, ByteDance has faced criticism from Disney over its recently launched AI video model, Seedance 2.0. In a cease-and-desist letter reported by Axios, Disney alleged that the model generated videos featuring characters such as Spider-Man and Darth Vader without authorisation. A lawyer for Disney said the company was concerned that its intellectual property was being reproduced and distributed without permission.