TikTok introduces Symphony Digital Avatars, letting companies ‘breathe life’ into their branded content

TikTok is introducing new generative AI tools for businesses and agencies as part of its Symphony suite of AI-powered ad solutions. The first is Digital Avatars, which brands can use to converse with followers and “breathe life” into their content marketing efforts. In addition, TikTok is rolling out a translation tool called Symphony AI Dubbing and launching an advisory board to help it understand the use of AI in creative marketing.

Is that TikTokker human or a bot?

“At TikTok, we aim to empower creators and propel their creativity to a global audience with the power of generative AI,” Andy Yang, TikTok’s head of creative product, says in a statement. “Symphony Digital Avatars unlock a new avenue for creators to scale their opportunities with brands globally. We aim to fuel the creator economy by investing in creative solutions that spark joy, imagination and action.”

Businesses can choose between two types of Digital Avatars: Stock or Custom. The former are pre-built avatars created using paid actors licensed for commercial use. TikTok claims Stock Avatars allow companies to “add a human touch to their content with quick and accessible global creators from a diverse range of backgrounds, nationalities, and languages.” However, with the latter, businesses can craft their own avatar to represent a creator or brand spokesperson with multi-language abilities from 30 different languages, such as Spanish, French, German, and Japanese.

Stock Avatars can be generated through the Symphony Creative Studio in TikTok’s Creative Center. Creators can specify the type of “person” they want to be generated by choosing from a variety of categories, including:

• Industry: E-commerce, gaming, social, finance, or education
• Body gesture: Standing frontally or sideways, sitting upright or sideways, taking a selfie while sitting or walking
• Clothing style: Casual, sporty or formal
• Scene: No background/green screen video, garden, street, office, bedroom, e-sports room, solid color background, in a car, indoor kitchen, indoor living room, bathroom, cloakroom, or at a makeup table

TikTok will then take the prompt to generate a series of avatars for you to choose from to insert directly into branded content.

When a business wants someone more representative of its brand, Custom Avatars come into play. This is helpful when an organization’s CEO or one of its most visible personalities cannot film TikTok videos for the social media team. Instead, content marketers can insert a digital replica using their brand’s intellectual property and localize it for wider reach.

Take individual creators as an example. Previously, if they were working with global brands, videos might have been produced only in English. But now, they could use TikTok’s Digital Avatars to generate one video with multiple localized versions, significantly boosting its reach. Brands could also leverage this technology, saving them the task of finding a spokesperson who could speak the language needed or requiring the personality to learn the language themselves.

However, while TikTok is introducing Digital Avatars today, only Stock avatars will be available through the company’s Beta Club and only for select brands. The company tells VentureBeat that it is still testing and refining Custom Avatars but has not set a release date.

These avatars will have an AI-generated content label affixed to them to let users know that they’re watching synthetic media. This follows a policy TikTok enacted in May to combat misinformation. It is different from another avatar offering the company launched in 2022. Back then, TikTok debuted animated Bitmoji-like avatars to provide content creators with new ways to express themselves and their work. While those may still be useful, these new Digital Avatars are aimed at those who want to put a more professional spin on their content.

The features available with TikTok’s offering pale compared to other AI avatar/agent programs that are available with the likes of Sprinklr, HubSpot and Zendesk. And that seems intentional because, with the social media app, it’s one-way communication. Social media teams and creators only need to push out their message. If followers want to dive deeper, they can click on the link in the bio or send a direct message, in which case, a team member or the creator themself can reply in private.

But as TikTok’s Symphony program continues to evolve, it will be worth seeing if the company further enhances these avatars’ capabilities.

Using AI to break down language barriers

Another feature coming to Symphony is Symphony AI Dubbing, a global translation tool that will allow creators and brands to seamlessly generate content in multiple languages. Ten languages are currently supported, including English, Japanese, Korean, Spanish, French, German, Portuguese, Turkish, Italian and Indonesia.

As TikTok notes, AI Dubbing “automatically detects the original language in a video, transcribes, translates and produces a dubbed video in the selected languages, giving creators and brands the ability to communicate with their global audiences.”

Launching the Symphony Collective

The last bit of Symphony news involves launching an industry advisory board called Symphony Collective. With the participation of representatives from Mondelez, American Eagle, Wendy’s, the NBA, agencies OMD, Tinulti, Day One and TBWA Chiat, and creators Drea Okeke, David Ma, Michelle Gonzales and O’Neil Thomas, TikTok hopes to better understand the development and use of AI in creative marketing. It’ll use this group as a sounding board to improve its AI marketing solutions and discuss industry challenges.

“TikTok has been a remarkable force for more open, diverse, and bold forms of creativity,” TBWA/Chiat/Day US Executive Director of Digital, Social and Innovation, Anthony Hamelle, remarks in a statement. “With gen AI as a creative catalyst, this stage that welcomes thousands of creators and communities will become even more dynamic. As a founding member of TikTok’s Symphony Collective, it is my honor…to work alongside TikTok and share some of the insights gleaned from TBWA’s groundbreaking projects on the platform, such as Hilton’s 10-min TikTok and our own gen AI initiatives and products such as FEED AI.”