The platform is rolling out a new feature that allows them to reduce the amount of AI-created media appearing in their streams. This move comes as the service revealed that it currently hosts in excess of 1 billion content made with AI.
Trial and Implementation
The update is undergoing trials over the next few weeks before a widespread rollout. This shift aligns with a increase in content created by AI, driven by recent content generation software.
AI Proliferation Online
Studies have shown that almost one in 10 of the fastest-growing video streams on another major platform exclusively feature clips produced artificially. A significant portion of this material is considered “AI slop”, a term for poor-quality, bulk-generated content that is typically illogical or surreal.
Our research shows that numerous viewers enjoy content made with AI tools, ranging from digital art to informative clips, and we intend to provide users the power to see more or less of that, depending on their own likes,” commented a spokesperson.
Volume and Proportions
TikTok disclosed that there are currently 1.3bn videos on its network identified as artificially created. Collectively, over 100 million videos are uploaded to the service each day, making AI content a relatively small part of its total content library.
User Control Features
Users will be able to decrease or raise the level of AI content they watch by accessing the topic control feature in the application and picking “AI-generated content”. Other topics that currently be adjusted under the filter cover politics, clothing, beauty, and dance.
AI Disclosure Rules
Its rules mandate content makers to label “realistic” AI-generated content, and it prohibits harmful fake videos of well-known individuals or emergencies. Any believable AI video that is not labeled can be deleted under its terms of service.
Furthermore, the app will henceforth add an “AI-made” tag to content produced via its proprietary AI systems, or detected by an industry-wide initiative for recognizing AI-generated material. This action is designed to stop users from seeking to evade the tagging system.
Responsible AI Funding
The company is also establishing a $2m AI literacy fund for professionals and institutions to produce informative material about using AI responsibly. This program will support non-profit groups specializing in educating programming and robotics.
Content Safety Approach
TikTok has supported its safety measures, during debate over proposals to lay off hundreds of content moderators in the UK. The company is planning to cut a significant number of roles in its content moderation department in the UK capital, with labor groups and online safety experts expressing worry that humans are being replaced by automated systems.
A company official clarified that people-led review would remain essential, but artificial intelligence can protect employees by removing the most distressing content before it has to be seen by people. The platform reported a notable drop in explicit and harmful content seen by human moderators over the past year due to intervention by its machine learning processes.
We believe it is crucial to balance humans and technology to ensure user safety,” the executive stated. “We’ll have people as integral to the approach, but we further consider it’s highly necessary to minimize viewing of unsafe media as quickly as possible, which is why a lot of the machine support is making a difference work at speed.”
