An uproar with a popular Kindle competitor e-reader has showcased how the use of Chinese AI models in US products could unwittingly spread Chinese propaganda.An LLM made by TikToks parent company ByteDance was used by an e-reader called Boox, according to screenshots about the AI shared on Reddit. When asked questions about China and its allies, this LLM spouted Chinese government propaganda, sparking an outcry from users, according to the post and TechCrunchs interactions with this LLM.The LLM in question was ByteDances Doubao, which is offered as an API under ByteDances cloud services division Volcano Engine. But the model is only meant to be used within Chinas mainland, a ByteDance spokesperson told TechCrunch. The e-readers China-based manufacturer, Onyx International, which sells Boox e-readers in both China and to the U.S., did not respond to requests for comment.Boox launched the AI assistant feature last summer. In December 2024, a user posted on a subreddit for e-readers that the new assistant was generating Chinese government propaganda in response to certain questions. For example, the AI assistant denied China ever having any so-called massacres in answer to a question about why it refused to discuss the Tiananmen Square crackdown, a screenshot shows.The AI assistant also refused to say anything critical about North Korea and Russia, claiming North Korea is a peace-loving country and that Russias role in Syria has been positive, the screenshots show. In contrast, the AI assistant was happy to criticize Western countries, noting that French colonialism often involved exploitation of local resources and native populations. In the screenshots shared on Reddit, the assistant states that it is an AI created by ByteDance, an international technology company.The Reddit post went viral and was covered by AI publication The Decoder and YouTubers The China Show.When TechCrunch used ByteDances Doubao service and asked it similar questions, its answers closely matched the kind of responses given by Booxs assistant in the Reddit post. For example, Doubao told TechCrunch that it can be stated with absolute certainty that the Chinese government has never massacred its own people, whereas other Chinese LLMs like DeepSeek and Qwen typically avoid or downplay the question. Doubao also refused to criticize Russia and North Korea when we asked about these countries, reverting only to positive content about their important and positive roles in the international community.Doubao has a penchant for using the term so-called to describe things the Chinese government doesnt like. There is no so-called genocide in Xinjiang, it told TechCrunch. This appears to mimic Chinese government spokespeople. Facts and truth have busted the so-called genocide in Xinjiang, foreign ministry spokesperson Zhao Lijian claimed at a press conference in 2021.The outcry over Booxs AI assistant has ebbed after Boox reportedly switched back to OpenAIs GPT-3 via Microsoft Azure, according to another users post in the Boox subreddit. Its still unclear which LLM Boox currently uses for its AI assistant. Boox hasnt released any statements about the incident, while OpenAI and Microsoft did not immediately respond to a request for comment from TechCrunch.Chinese generative AI models have become some of the most popular models in use. But the incident shows the risks involved launching tools that incorporate Chinese generative AI, a trend some AI leaders have already warned about.If you create a chatbot and ask it a question about Tiananmen, well, its not going to respond to you the same way as if it was a system developed in France or the US, Clement Delangue, the CEO of HuggingFace, warned on a French podcast in September 2024, TechCrunch previously reported.So if you have a country like China that becomes by far the strongest on AI, in fact they will be capable of spreading certain cultural aspects that perhaps the Western world wouldnt want to see spread, Delangue said in the podcast.