Tiktok AI changes need attention from parents and families

TO CHECK: Last week Tiktok users started to notice that their videos had been opted in to Tiktok’s new AI remix feature under the original sign-up terms. 

The issue seems to be a moving one (not unusual!) and so the below advice is on our best understanding of the current situation. 

If your child or a child you know uses the platform, please read our important article on the changes and the steps you need to take to protect your child’s content and their image.  

What has changed? 

This week, TikTok users began to notice a quiet but very significant update: their videos appeared to have been automatically opted in to a new feature called “AI remix.” The feature appears to be marketed as a fun feature but has wide ranging potential consequences.  

The original terms and conditions on sign up to almost all social media platforms are notoriously wide ranging, and here they appear to have been interpreted as allowing this change without updating users. 

What does this mean? 

The AI remix feature allows Tiktok to use all videos posted on the platform to train its AI systems and generate new content. Practically, this could mean (and users have identified videos of this happening to their content) that if you have posted a video of yourself talking about something, your likeness can be used to train Tiktok’s AI, but also to generate other videos, at the request of any other user on the app (e.g. where you say something completely different, your environment or outfit is different.) 

Of course, this could happen to any content we post anyway, however this feature appears to make it incredibly easy for other users to exercise this level of control over another’s content. 

All AI models are trained on all kinds of data including content we have posted to online platforms, and content we input (e.g. if we’ve sent ChatGPT a photo of us).

However, this new setting represents an increasing normalisation of the use of users’ data in AI systems and of AI-manipulated content – where if we are on a social media platform we have basically opted in to any of our data being used and manipulated unless we take detailed actions to change our individual settings. 

It is important to note that at the moment, despite videos on the platform appearing to have been remixed, our team cannot find a way to access this feature to allow us to manipulate others content. But the area is moving fast so we would recommend the steps below out of caution. 

Before we do, let’s answer: 

My child’s account is set to private, will this change affect them? 

If your child’s Tiktok account is set to private, their videos will still be opted in to this new setting and therefore used to train Tiktok’s AI. The only difference is that only their followers (those who can see their posts) will be able to ‘remix’ their content with the new feature. 

How should we respond? 

From now on, it appears that when users go to post a draft on Tiktok, they will have the option to switch this setting off. However, for videos already posted on a user’s account, the only way to disable this setting is to individually switch it off in privacy settings for each video you have posted.  

Even if your child’s account is set to private it would be important to talk to them about the feature and make sure they toggle this off on every future posted video, and you may need to toggle off the feature on every individual video that they have already posted that includes their image. 

What can we do to support digital literacy learning for every child? 

When we talk to children about privacy, we often focus on who can see what they post. 

Increasingly, posting on social media also means allowing platforms to analyse your content, and use it to train AI systems. That can mean learning from your face, voice, behaviour, and identity. 

Features like this can seem harmless on the surface. They might even sound creative or fun when they are advertised to young people. 

However, we have to think critically about what this really means in practice. This is a key part of our Respected and Safe model, which we deliver in schools. 

For more details on how we can support your school or community please DM us.