ByteDance is reportedly exploring an entry into autonomous driving, with the project now in an early preparation stage, according to a Monday report by Chinese tech media outlet 36Kr citing several industry sources. The project is currently led by the world model team under ByteDance's Seed team, whose research overlaps with the environmental understanding, prediction and planning capabilities needed for autonomous driving. ByteDance is interested in autonomous driving scenarios including unmanned logistics, with the business falling under the auto industry line of its cloud services brand Volcengine. The report also said ByteDance has approached a number of top assisted-driving or autonomous driving talents, and some technical talents who are optimistic about the move plan to join. In response to the report, ByteDance said its frontier large-model exploration areas include physical AI, where there are many early-stage research efforts and explorations, but it has no plan to build a smart driving business. ByteDance has already entered the smart cockpit field through the Doubao large model and Volcengine, which mainly provides automakers with AI technology, cloud services and cockpit interaction capabilities.