Be they viral dancers mimicking the moves of Taylor Swift, short-form comedians, or beauty bloggers, creators are the heart and soul of TikTok -- and the social media company knows it.
On Tuesday, the ByteDance-owned company rolled out a series of product updates focused on elevating the app's creator experience. Announced during the TikTok US Creator Summit, an in-person gathering with more than 300 TikTok creators, the newest updates are set to help them share and make content more effectively, particularly with the help of artificial intelligence.
Even as the internet is flooded with AI slop, TikTok is betting on the technology. TikTok's latest product rollout is harnessing the power of AI for content creation, while boosting monetization along the way.
"At TikTok, we want to empower human creativity with AI-powered tools that make it easier to create, discover, and connect around original content," the company said in a statement. "We can't wait to see how these new tools inspire creators to bring even more great content to life."
TikTok's recent rollout is not the company's first dabble with artificial intelligence. Since 2024, TikTok's AI creative suite, TikTok Symphony, has allowed businesses to generate content and avatars, and translate and dub videos by harnessing AI. Earlier this year, the app rolled out AI Alive, a feature that allows static photos to be transformed into short-form videos for user's in-app stories.
Still, the recent features are aiming to make creator's lives easier -- at least the creating part. Here's what's new.
To help creators streamline the editing process, TikTok is introducing an AI-powered editing tool dubbed Smart Split. The new feature automatically reframes and clips long videos, as well as transcribes and captions longer content to be transformed into multiple TikTok-ready shorter videos.
Now available globally on the TikTok Studio Web, the feature allows creators to upload videos longer than a minute for Smart Split to reframe the video vertically. Smart Split can also suggest video length and generate captions for the adapted video, which can then be directly to the app. For instance, a long video podcast can be easily trimmed down and edited into fragments that creators can then roll out.
Sometimes the hardest part of producing content is not only publishing, but creating it too. TikTok's AI Outline, which is now available for U.S. users over 18, sets out to help structure the creative process by helping users generate hooks, hashtags, video titles, and outlines based on prompts and trending topics from the app's Creator Search Insights.
Additionally, AI Outline divides a user's video into six customizable parts in the creator's style. The feature allows creators to lengthen or shorten a title, generate script ideas, and refine their hooks.
Suggestions made by both new AI tools are set to abide by TikTok's Community Guidelines, and videos produced using the features will undergo a moderation review prior to publishing on the app.
The company is updating its revenue share for creators by building on its existing subscription program -- a Patreon-like setup that allows creators to build a pay-to-join community with exclusive content.
The company's announced update will make it possible for creators to get up to 90 percent of the subscriptions profit payouts. Creators with a subscription community will now receive 70 percent of revenue shares, while those meeting extra requirements can rack up an extra 20 percent monthly bonus.
