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the feature is available exclusively through the stories camera in the app, where ai is used to generate short videos that reflect the atmosphere of the image—such as moving clouds, changing sky colors, and natural sounds like crashing waves—depending on the content of the selected photo. the tool can also animate group selfies and highlight gestures and facial expressions.
this development follows tiktok’s previous release of a text-to-image generator within the app, marking a new competitive move against platforms like instagram and snapchat, which have offered similar text-to-image features. however, tiktok is going a step further with “ai alive” by enabling the creation of animated videos from still images.
tiktok emphasized that all videos created with the new tool will be clearly labeled as “ai-generated”, and will include c2pa technical metadata, which helps identify the video's origin and confirm its artificial nature—even if it is downloaded or reshared outside the platform.
the company stated on its official blog that the tool underwent several trust and safety tests. these include reviews of the original image, the text used to generate the video, and the final video result before it is shown to users. the platform also retains the ability to report inappropriate content and conducts a final review before publicly publishing stories.
to create a video using “ai alive”, users can open the stories camera, tap the blue “+” button from the inbox or profile page, then choose an image from the story album. the ai alive icon will then appear in the toolbar, allowing the user to edit the image and transform it into a video.