If you’re tech/internet-minded enough to have found your way onto this website there’s a pretty high chance that you know what TikTok is. The social media platform was already blowing up pre-pandemic, and its popularity (particularly amongst younger folks) soared to new heights in 2020. Now it’s decided to put its clearly successful AI tech and algorithms up for grabs.
TikTok talks totals
TikTok’s overarching company, ByteDance, launched ‘BytePlus’ last month, reports the Financial Times, a subdivision geared at selling some of the app’s most coveted features to other businesses. Specifically, some of its AI kit and the algorithm behind its ‘For You’ page. Anyone who’s used the app for long enough knows how quickly the ForYou page can get you hooked, so it’s no surprise that other companies would want to get a piece of it.
On the AI side of things, ByteDance is auctioning features like video effects (e.g. filters), data analysis tools, and real-time transcription (for auto-generated closed captions). Now, obviously, prospective buyers aren’t looking to purchase sections of TikTok like pieces of a pie. Rather, they’ll be buying the tech behind these features with the hopes of applying them to their own products and projects. Whether this will rocket them to the same level of success or not is up for debate.
TikTok has become an absolute titan of the social-media-scape, whether you like it or not. It, like Clubhouse, has spawned a number of clones and lookalikes, but none have managed to match the success of the original. Maybe by actually using some of its own framework, another platform could imitate its success. Let’s just hope it doesn’t inherit its data scraping policies too.
We don’t know how much ByteDance is selling its tech for right now, but chances are if you have to ask, you can’t afford it.
Source: Gizmodo