TikTok is testing a new feature that lets users design generative AI avatars. Social media expert Matt Navarra made the initial discovery of this latest tool. According to the company, the product is currently evaluated in a few specific markets and isn’t generally available. Concisely speaking, TikTok is creating a Lensa-like app within its platform with this test product.
According to screenshots published by Navarra, once users have access to the program, it would prompt them to choose three to ten photos to create avatars. The tool can only be used once each day, and each use will result in the creation of up to 30 avatars.
You can select up to five styles for the tool to utilize when creating your avatars after you upload your photographs. Navarra observes that the program needs a few minutes to create the AI avatars. The AI avatars are then available for download, one at a time. You can upload an avatar to use as your profile avatar or share it with your TikTok story.
In an email to a news firm, a TikTok representative said, “We’re always thinking about new ways to add value to the community and enrich the TikTok experience, as we continue to build a safe place that entertains, inspires creativity, and drives culture. In a few select regions, we’re experimenting with a new way to create and share profile pictures with the TikTok community.”
Although the styles available with TikTok’s tool are more constrained than those available on the premium app Lensa, the end effects are nonetheless impressive.
The TikTok app’s content moderation mechanisms will review uploaded photographs for compliance with the Community Guidelines before they may be utilized to make avatars. Moreover, after a brief interval, TikTok will delete all the pictures users post.
According to TikTok, some of the features it tests don’t make it into the finished product, and for those that do, they may change by the time they are made widely available.
As users worldwide uploaded artistic renditions of themselves that they created on the app, Lensa rose to the top of the U.S. App Store charts last winter. As a result of the app’s success, consumer demand for AI edits propelled a large number of additional “AI” apps into U.S. App Store’s top charts. At the time, AI picture editors occupied the top three positions in the U.S. App Store.
Given the popularity of generative AI avatar tools, it is not surprising that TikTok wants to include a similar feature on its platform. As artists have expressed concern about applications like Lensa AI sampling their work, the success of AI picture apps is accompanied by controversy. TikTok is probably experimenting with a limited tool to avoid such backlash.
It’s important to note that TikTok had previously created and integrated its own constrained version of a well-known AI program. The company first released an in-app text-to-picture AI generator in August 2022. It allows users to write in a prompt and obtain an image that may be used as the background in their films. The filter was made available in reaction to the DALL-E 2 text-to-image AI generator from OpenAI becoming so popular.
