ByteDance has been buying ad space and hiring creators to promote Cici, its AI chatbot app, in markets such as the UK, Mexico, and parts of Southeast Asia.
The Beijing-based company that owns TikTok built Doubao, which has become the most popular AI chatbot in China. Launched in 2023, Doubao reached more than 157 million monthly active users by August, according to Chinese analytics firm QuestMobile.
Less well known outside China is Doubao’s overseas sibling, Cici. Released around the same time, the two apps share a nearly identical female cartoon avatar; Cici’s icon shows the character with longer hair. The app is region-locked and is not available in China or the United States, a factor that helps explain its lower profile.
ByteDance has quietly pushed Cici in the UK, Mexico and a number of Southeast Asian countries. Meta’s Ad Library lists more than 400 distinct Cici ads running in Mexico in October, most highlighting the model’s ability to solve math problems and stressing that the service is free. Advertising buys are also active in the UK and the Philippines. On TikTok, creators from those markets have posted dozens of sponsored clips tagged with #ciciai.
That promotional effort has translated to a clear uptick in downloads. Sensor Tower data shows Cici ranked among the top 20 most downloaded free apps on the Google Play Store in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Mexico and the UK over the past three months. In Mexico, for example, Cici has been the most downloaded free app on Google Play every day for the past week. In the UK, the app was the ninth-most-popular free app in Apple’s App Store on Thursday.
Cici’s app and website make little mention of any connection to ByteDance. The company previously confirmed control of the products to Forbes in 2024. Cici’s privacy policy says the app uses technology from other ByteDance-owned services, including the photo editor PicPic and the coding assistant Coze. For text generation, Cici relies on OpenAI’s GPT and Google’s Gemini rather than ByteDance’s own large language models. ByteDance did not respond to a request for comment.
The mobile interface resembles Doubao’s design. Users can chat with the AI by text or audio, generate and analyze images, and try autonomous agents created by other users. The international build lacks some of Doubao’s more advanced multi-modal and social capabilities: it cannot produce music or video, and there is no in-app option for sharing creations directly to a social feed.
Since TikTok rose to global prominence, ByteDance has had difficulty producing another app with comparable worldwide reach. Cici’s presence outside China remains small when measured against Doubao’s domestic dominance, yet the company appears willing to spend on user acquisition as it attempts to expand. Outside China, ByteDance will confront rivals such as OpenAI, Anthropic and Google, without the Chinese internet rules that limit access to Western AI services.
ByteDance’s strength comes from years of developing highly engaging mobile products that over a billion people use every day. “Chinese AI companies are probably better positioned than Western ones to build consumer products people actually want to use. Neither Google nor OpenAI have mastered the kind of dopamine-driven engagement that ByteDance built TikTok on,” says Dermot McGrath, a Shanghai-based investor and technologist.
McGrath warned that ByteDance’s advantages might remain “largely confined to China and maybe other Asian markets” if the company cannot handle geopolitical strains or secure partnerships with Western firms, he added. The global AI app market is fragmented, and users pick platforms based on cultural preferences and local spending habits. In several countries, ByteDance continues to be seen as linked to the Chinese state, a perception that raises concerns about data security and political manipulation.