Dive Brief:

• TikTok is expanding its Symphony suite of generative artificial intelligence (AI) products for brands, per news shared with Marketing Dive. The announcement was made as part of the platform’s presence at the Cannes Lions international advertising festival. 
• One of the tools, Symphony Image to Video, converts static pictures, such as product photos, into five-second clips tailored to TikTok. Text to Video does the same for text prompts while Showcase Products introduces digital avatars on TikTok that can hold goods, model clothing or show off an app on a phone screen.
• Image to Video is available directly within Adobe’s Express offering for social content creation as part of an expanded partnership with TikTok. Symphony’s solutions are also coming to WPP Open, the ad-holding group’s AI-powered operating system, further broadening their availability to brands.    

Dive Insight:

TikTok is ramping up its efforts around generative AI as digital advertising platforms race to roll out technology that can do more of the heavy lifting for marketers. CMOs have acknowledged pressure to generate more content, faster, even as many contend with stagnant budgets. Generative AI is positioned as a way to improve productivity, though it has taken a while for the technology to meet advertisers’ needs around quality.   

TikTok debuted Symphony last June, giving brands the ability to tap into digital avatars, edit videos and optimize campaigns with the aid of automation. The latest updates enable faster, more dynamic content creation based on simple inputs like text prompts and static product imagery, which can quickly be spun into five-second videos aligning with TikTok’s orientation around short-form content. Showcase Products also step up the role digital avatars play in the TikTok advertising ecosystem, with artificial models showing off everything from water bottles to red midi dresses.  

To get its features in the hands of more advertisers, TikTok is deepening its work with Adobe and WPP. The ad-holding group is the first in the agency category to integrate Symphony, which may provide an edge with brands prioritizing video-first social content. WPP has been battered by client losses and spending pullbacks, and directed more energy toward its Open operating system and AI as part of its turnaround strategy. 

On the digital avatar front, WPP’s clients will be able to leverage licensed and consensually approved representations of real people, which was positioned in the announcement as a way to personalize and scale global branded content. Similarly, TikTok is providing AI-powered dubbing and translation tools that support over 15 languages. Danone, a WPP client, is a launch partner for the Symphony integration, with a focus on its plant-based Alpro brand in Europe. WPP is aligning the TikTok tie-up with a prior commitment to spend 300 million pounds, or roughly $400 million, on AI, data and technology annually. 

“With TikTok’s Symphony Suite, we’re giving our creatives even more firepower to push boundaries and experiment for our clients,” said Rob Reilly, chief creative officer at WPP, in a statement.

AI-generated content was initially clumsy, particularly in regards to video, with avatars that landed firmly in the uncanny valley. But the technology has been refined over time, and more difficult to discern from the real thing as software is able to emulate more believable movement and speech. Symphony content will be automatically labeled as AI-generated, as well as subject to multiple rounds of safety reviews in regards to visual inputs and prompts.   

TikTok’s bigger push around Symphony follows rivals launching more generative AI tools targeted at brands. Meta, its chief competitor in the U.S., is reportedly planning to automate most marketing functions with AI, a threat to agencies like WPP. Meanwhile, President Donald Trump said on Tuesday he would “probably” extend a deadline, currently set for June 19, for ByteDance to divest the U.S. assets of TikTok.