Users will soon have a updated setting that allows them to reduce the volume of AI-made media appearing in their feeds. This step comes as the company revealed that it currently hosts over 1 bn content made with AI.
Pilot Phase and Launch
The update is undergoing trials over the next few weeks before a full-scale rollout. This shift coincides with a increase in AI-generated material, driven by new AI video creators.
The Broader AI Trend
Recent reports that approximately one in 10 of the most rapidly expanding channels on another major platform primarily display content made by AI. A large amount of this material is classified as “AI slop”, a term for inferior, bulk-generated content that is often illogical or bizarre.
Based on user feedback that many people like content created using AI tools, including computer-generated images to science explainers, and we want to give people the ability to see more or less of that, based on their own preferences,” commented a company executive.
Scale of AI Content
TikTok disclosed that there are currently 1.3 billion videos on its network labeled as artificially created. Collectively, over 100 million media items are submitted to the platform each day, making AI content a limited percentage of its total content library.
How to Adjust Settings
Viewers will be able to decrease or raise the amount of AI content they see by using the topic control feature in the app and selecting AI-made media. Additional categories that can already be controlled under the tool encompass current affairs, style, aesthetics, and choreography.
Platform Guidelines
TikTok’s guidelines oblige users to identify lifelike artificially created content, and it prohibits harmful AI impersonations of public figures or critical incidents. Any realistic AI-generated clip that is not labeled can be removed under its terms of service.
Furthermore, the service will henceforth apply an AI-generated tag to content made using its proprietary AI systems, or flagged by an cross-platform project for identifying content made by AI. This action is aimed to stop users from seeking to evade the tagging system.
Educational Initiatives
The platform is also establishing a $2 million awareness program for specialists and groups to create informative material about responsible artificial intelligence. This project will assist charitable organizations focused on training computer science.
Platform Protection
TikTok has justified its moderation strategy, following debate over proposals to cut jobs for hundreds of safety staff in the UK. The company is set to eliminate hundreds of positions in its user protection division in London, with labor groups and digital protection specialists expressing worry that people are being substituted by automated systems.
A senior executive clarified that human moderation would continue to be important, but artificial intelligence can protect employees by filtering out the most distressing content before it gets reviewed by staff. The platform reported a notable drop in explicit and harmful content seen by safety staff over the last 12 months due to intervention by its automated systems.
It is vital to balance people and machines to ensure user safety,” the executive stated. “We’ll have humans as integral to the approach, but we also think it’s highly necessary to reduce exposure to dangerous material as swiftly, which is why a lot of the machine support is really helping us process content quickly.”
