Introduction
Cici was ByteDance's overseas AI assistant; it was renamed Dola in November 2025, so if you are looking for "Cici AI" today you will find it listed as "Dola (formerly Cici)." The rename was a branding change, not a shutdown: the same app, account, and features carried over, and the old web address (cici.com) now redirects to Dola. Cici first launched in August 2023 as ByteDance's answer to ChatGPT for users outside China, and by the end of 2025 the rebranded Dola had passed 10 million daily active users, concentrated in Southeast Asia, Latin America, and the UK.
This post explains what Cici was, what Dola is now, how it differs from ByteDance's China-only assistant Doubao, where it is available, and the open questions around privacy and which AI model actually powers it.
What Is Cici AI, and Why Did It Become Dola?
Cici (stylized "Cici") was a free, chat-based AI assistant built by ByteDance, the company behind TikTok. Launched in August 2023, it handled the now-familiar assistant tasks through a single chat window: conversation, writing and rewriting, translation, document and article summarization, and image generation. It ran on iOS, Android, Windows, and the web.
On the app stores, the developer is listed as a ByteDance overseas subsidiary (Spring (SG) Pte. Ltd.), and the Android package name (com.larus.wolf) is shared across the app's history — one reason it is clear this is a straightforward rename rather than a new product.
The November 2025 Rename
Around November 3, 2025, ByteDance renamed Cici to Dola. The App Store version notes for the release put it plainly: "We've got a new name! Cici is now Dola. Everything you love stays the same." Both Google Play and the App Store now show the title as "Dola (formerly Cici)", and searches for the old brand resolve to the new one. So to answer the common question directly: yes, Cici is now Dola, and no data or accounts were lost in the switch.
What Is Dola AI?
Dola is the current name for that same overseas assistant — a general-purpose, freemium AI chatbot. Its core capabilities are:
- Conversation and search — open-ended Q&A and follow-up chat, an AI agent-style experience for everyday tasks.
- Writing — drafting, rewriting, summarizing meetings and articles.
- Translation — the app's interface ships in roughly 19 languages (English plus Arabic, French, German, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Portuguese, Spanish, Thai, Vietnamese, and more), with translation across many more.
- Image generation and photo editing — multimodal features spanning several art styles, plus voice input.
By the numbers, ByteDance disclosed on December 31, 2025 that Dola had surpassed 10 million daily active users, a figure reported by Pandaily in early January 2026. Cumulative installs on Google Play have passed 50 million. Since around October 2025, Dola has ranked among the top-20 free apps on Google Play in Indonesia, Malaysia, Mexico, and the United Kingdom, and it spent a stretch as the number-one daily download in Mexico. Note that 10 million DAU is the latest publicly confirmed figure at the time of writing; treat any larger number you see elsewhere with skepticism.
Cici/Dola vs. Doubao: Two Different ByteDance Assistants
The most common point of confusion is the relationship between Dola and Doubao (豆包). They are siblings, not the same product:
- Dola (formerly Cici) is the overseas assistant, offered in English and other non-Chinese languages, and not available inside mainland China.
- Doubao is ByteDance's China-domestic assistant — the runaway hit at home, with a Chinese-language interface and its own app. We cover it separately in ByteDance's Doubao: China's Leading AI Chatbot and on the Doubao tool page, and its underlying models are documented on the Seed 2.1 (Doubao) model page.
Think of it as two front doors to broadly the same technology lineage, tuned for two very different markets. If you are in China you use Doubao; if you are abroad you use Dola. This post is about the overseas chat assistant only — ByteDance's separate overseas video apps are a different family of products.
Is Cici (Dola) AI Chinese, and Is It Safe?
Yes, Cici/Dola is Chinese in origin: it is a ByteDance product, from the same parent company as TikTok and the domestic Doubao assistant. That ownership is exactly why "is it safe?" is a fair question.
On the mechanics, Dola behaves like other mainstream assistants — it processes your prompts on ByteDance's servers and collects usage data to run and improve the service. The specific concern people raise is not that it is unusually invasive, but that it is operated by a Chinese company that has faced sustained regulatory scrutiny in Western markets. In the US, that scrutiny is the backdrop to the app's absence there (see availability below), tied to the same foreign-ownership legislation that targeted TikTok, according to secondary reporting.
A practical read: for casual use, Dola is a normal AI chatbot with normal AI-chatbot privacy trade-offs. The sensible precautions are the same ones that apply to any assistant, including Western ones — do not paste passwords, financial details, confidential work documents, or other sensitive data into the chat, and review the app's privacy policy for how your region is handled. Whether that is "safe enough" depends on your personal threshold and any rules your employer sets.
Where Is Cici/Dola Available?
Dola is region-locked, and availability is the single most-asked question about it. Based on secondary sources rather than an official ByteDance availability list, the picture as of early 2026 is:
- Reported available: United Kingdom, Mexico, Brazil, Spain, and much of Southeast Asia (Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Thailand), among others.
- Reported unavailable: the United States, Canada, Australia, and mainland China.
Two caveats matter here. First, mainland China gets Doubao instead, by design. Second, app availability shifts as ByteDance expands or adjusts its rollout and as regulations change, so this list can go stale. If you want to know whether Dola works where you are, the reliable check is to open your regional Google Play or App Store and search for "Dola" — the listing either appears or it does not.
Which AI Model Powers Dola?
This is genuinely unresolved, so it is worth flagging rather than asserting. Different secondary sources give different answers:
- ByteDance said in early 2024 that its overseas apps — Cici among them — ran on OpenAI's GPT through a Microsoft Azure license, and secondary sources have since described the overseas app as drawing on third-party large language models such as OpenAI's GPT series alongside Google's Gemini.
- Others say it runs on ByteDance's own in-house models — the same Doubao/Seed family that powers the domestic assistant.
ByteDance has not published a definitive, current model card for the consumer Dola app that settles this, and it is plausible the answer is "both, depending on the feature or region" — and that the stack has shifted since that 2024 statement as ByteDance's in-house Doubao/Seed models matured. Until there is a current, definitive model card, treat the model behind today's app as unconfirmed.
Cici/Dola vs. ChatGPT
For most everyday tasks — chatting, drafting text, translating, generating images — Dola and ChatGPT occupy the same category, and a casual user would find them broadly comparable. The meaningful differences are around it rather than in the chat box:
- Availability: ChatGPT is available across North America and most of the world; Dola is not offered in the US, Canada, or Australia.
- Markets and price: Dola is aggressively free and localized for emerging markets in Southeast Asia and Latin America, which is where its 10-million-DAU growth has come from.
- Provenance: ChatGPT is a US product from OpenAI; Dola is a Chinese product from ByteDance, which carries the ownership considerations discussed above.
If you are inside a region where Dola is offered and want a free, multilingual assistant, it is a credible option; if provenance or US availability matters to you, that is the deciding factor rather than raw capability.
Conclusion
Cici did not disappear — it became Dola in November 2025, and it is the same overseas AI assistant from ByteDance, now with more than 10 million daily active users and 50 million-plus installs concentrated in the UK, Latin America, and Southeast Asia. It is distinct from Doubao, ByteDance's separate China-domestic assistant. The two open questions worth carrying away are practical ones: availability is region-locked (reportedly no US, Canada, Australia, or mainland China), so check your own app store, and the exact model behind Dola remains unconfirmed. Treat it like any capable AI chatbot — useful, and worth the same data-privacy caution you would apply to any of them.
For related Chinese AI products and how to access them, see what Quark is and ByteDance's AI video apps — Jimeng, Dreamina and Seedance — decoded.
Sources
- Dola (formerly Cici) on the App Store — official listing, developer, features, and the "Cici is now Dola" version note
- Dola: Formerly Cici on Google Play — official Android listing and rename confirmation
- Pandaily: ByteDance's Overseas AI Assistant Dola Surpasses 10 Million Daily Active Users — 10M DAU disclosure (Dec 31, 2025), installs, and market rankings
- Forbes Australia: TikTok owner ByteDance quietly launched 4 generative AI apps powered by OpenAI's GPT — ByteDance spokesperson confirming GPT via a Microsoft Azure license for its overseas apps (Jan 2024)
- Doubao — Wikipedia — background on ByteDance's assistant family and the Cici/Dola overseas branding