By: Mia Wang

Recently, ‘AI storytelling’ has come up on many people’s TikTok and Instagram feeds. This is when an AI-generated “person” will show up on screen and tell outrageous fictitious stories.

AI storytelling videos often include moving images or avatars that look and sound like real human beings. These videos can range from historical figures talking about their lives to disturbing stories. “In some cases, videos with millions of views feature content that could be deemed inappropriate and even disturbing for kids”(CBC). This includes stories of abuse or violence toward children. Sometimes, it can be hard to tell whether this AI-generated content is real or fake.

Natural language processing and machine learning are the two ways machines can create written narratives that sound human generated. “Natural language processing (NLP) is the ability of a machine to understand and interpret human language”(AI Contentfy). Not only does this allow machines to recognize words or phrases, but they can also understand their meaning. Machine learning allows these generators to learn from data and improve. When the machine is given a prompt, it uses NLP to interpret the context and generates a story. While creating the story, it uses machine learning to improve the output based on feedback and other data.

Tik Tok’s policies “state that AI-generated media ‘that contains the likeness of any real private figure’ is not allowed”(CBC). AI-generated content that features celebrities or public figures is allowed on Tik Tok. However, they have certain policies around it. It is prohibited from including hate speech, sexual exploitation, or harassment. Also, when creating a public figure using AI, the person must be 18 or older. This means videos with avatars representing children are not allowed on the platform.

If the content is toxic or you don’t want to see it on your feed, you can click the ‘not interested’ button to remove similar videos from popping up. This can help create a more positive and happier feed for you.