TikTok is trying out a new tool that allows users to build generative AI avatars, according to confirmation. The company confirmed the existence of the tool, and social media consultant Matt Navarra was the first to spot the new tool. The company did not widely roll it out but instead confirmed that the tool is still in pilot mode and only a few markets in which the company is testing it. With this testing product, TikTok basically creates an app inside its own social media service similar to Lensa.

The first thing to do with it is when users enter it, for creating avatars, three to ten pictures will have to be selected, which is determined according to the screenshots by Navarra. In a single day, this tool may be used only one time; with each time, the output will go up to 30 avatars.
New Generative AI avatar creator arrives in TikTok! ????????????
Look in the thread to know what it is capable of ???? pic.twitter.com/TDBbwok6bt

After uploading your images, you can choose up to five different styles that the tool will use when generating your avatars. According to Navarra, it only takes a couple of minutes for the app to generate the AI avatars. You can then download one or several of the AI avatars. You can share an avatar to your TikTok story or upload it as your profile avatar.

We're always thinking about new ways to add value to the community and enrich the TikTok experience, as we continue to build a safe place that entertains, inspires creativity, and drives culture, according to a TikTok spokesperson who emailed TechCrunch. "In a few select regions, we're experimenting with a new way to create and share profile pictures with the TikTok community,".

While the styles with TikTok's tool are pretty far less varied than is possible in the paid Lensa app, the outcome is still pretty fabulous.
And lets you post an avatar to your TikTok story and /upload it as your profile avatar pic.twitter.com/XPzhNxjqsK
—Matt Navarra (I quit X. Follow me on Threads) (@MattNavarra) April 25, 2023

No images that violate the Community Guidelines of TikTok will be used to create avatars. All the photos uploaded will be moderated by the content moderation systems of the app. TikTok will delete all the photos that the users upload after a very short period of time.

According to TikTok, not all the features experimented upon end up in the product, and by the time the features do make it into the product, they look and feel different.

Last winter, Lensa broke to the top of U.S. App Store charts as users around the globe posted artistic renditions of themselves that they generated through the app. Consumer demand for AI edits, brought on by the app's success, had pushed myriad other "AI" applications into the Top Charts at the U.S. App Store. All three number one spots at the App Store were then AI photo editors.

With the buzz around generative AI avatar tools, it's no wonder why TikTok is weighing its decision to include its version within the platform. Of course, the success around AI photo apps is matched with controversy from artists feeling that apps like Lensa AI are sampling their work. TikTok will likely want to avoid such controversy by experimenting with a toy.

This is not the first time that TikTok has developed and integrated its own limited version of a popular AI app. The company released an in-app text-to-image AI generator earlier in August 2022, which lets users input a prompt and receive an image that can be used as the background in their videos. The filter came out in response to OpenAI's DALL-E 2 text-to-image AI generator.