China's ByteDance, the parent of social media platform TikTok, has laid off more than 700 workers from its Malaysian unit as the company shifts its focus towards wider use of AI in content moderation.
Employees mostly involved in content moderation operations positions received news of the layoffs by email late last Wednesday.
TikTok confirmed its official statement to Reuters regarding the layoffs and they did not mention the actual number of the number of workers in Malaysia that were removed.
Commenting further, they expect that the majority of global users will be affected by the AI simplification operational improvement plan.
Bytedance has over 110,000 employees in over 200 cities worldwide.
The tech firm is also planning more layoffs next month as the popular app looks to consolidate some of its regional operations.
The change is their ongoing effort to further strengthen its global operating model in content moderation.
The company expects to invest $2 billion globally in security issues this year and will continue to improve efficiency with 80% of content that violates guidelines being automatically removed.
The job cuts come as global technology firms face greater regulatory pressure in Malaysia where the government has asked social media operators to apply for operating licenses by January as part of efforts to combat cybercrime.
Malaysia reported a sharp rise in harmful social media content earlier this year and urged firms including TikTok to step up monitoring on their platforms
