According to the company, TikTok is testing a new feature that lets users design generative AI avatars. Social media expert Matt Navarra made the initial discovery of the new technology. According to the company, the product is presently being evaluated in a few specific markets and isn’t generally available. TikTok is creating a Lensa-like app within its platform with this prototype product.

According to screenshots published by Navarra, once users have access to the program, it would prompt them to choose three to ten photos to create avatars. The tool can only be used once each day, and each use will result in the creation of up to 30 avatars.

You can select up to five different styles for the tool to utilize when creating your avatars when you upload your photographs. Navarra observes that the program needs a few minutes to construct the AI avatars. The AI avatars are then available for download, one at a time. You can upload an avatar to use as your profile avatar or share it with your TikTok story.

“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,” a spokesperson for TikTok told TechCrunch in an email. “In a few select regions, we’re experimenting with a new way to create and share profile pictures with the TikTok community.”

The TikTok app’s content moderation mechanisms will review uploaded photographs for compliance with the Community Guidelines before they may be utilized to make avatars. After a brief interval, TikTok will destroy all of the photographs that users post.

According to TikTok, some of the features it tests don’t make it into the finished product, and for those that do, they may change by the time they are made widely available.

As users worldwide submitted artistic representations of themselves that they created on the app, Lensa rose to the top of the U.S. App Store charts last winter. As a result of the app’s success, consumer demand for AI edits propelled a large number of additional “AI” apps into the top charts of the U.S. App Store. At the time, AI picture editors occupied the top three positions in the U.S. App Store.

Given the popularity of generative AI avatar tools, it is not surprising that TikTok wants to include a similar feature on its platform. As artists have expressed concern about applications like Lensa AI using their work as samples, the success of AI picture apps is, of course, accompanied by controversy. TikTok is probably experimenting with a limited tool to steer clear of such backlash.

It’s important to note that TikTok had previously created and integrated its own constrained version of a well-known AI program. The business first released an in-app text-to-picture AI generator in August 2022, allowing users to write in a prompt and obtain an image that may be used as the background in their films.