CANNES, France — Oral arguments to appeal the TikTok ban are set to begin on September 16 at the US Court of Appeals in Washington, DC.
While the platform's fate is still uncertain, TikTok's president of global business solutions, Blake Chandlee, is not.
“We are confident in our position,” Chandli told Yahoo Finance in an interview at the Cannes Lions Festival of Creativity. “You know, we think it's a ban. We think that from a legal standpoint, the law is on our side, and we look forward to challenging it.”
Despite scrutiny from US lawmakers, TikTok continues to innovate through collaborative efforts, and its latest launch — Symphony Digital Avatars — puts artificial intelligence at the forefront. Basically, avatars are like you, but better.
“We think this is a huge step in the creative process,” Chandli said. “So we've been working with creators and brands for a while to make sure we're building something that really meets their needs.”
Symphony Digital Avatars are the latest in a suite of creative AI tools TikTok plans to scale creators' content globally this spring.
“What we designed avatars to do is to allow. [creators] To create a piece of content and then scale it globally,” he explained. “So you can create it in Spanish or English, and you can scale it to 30 languages, which our creators Gives the community the ability to instantly reach their audience.”never been able to reach before.”
“Similarly on the graphical side of things, they can create different backgrounds, they do different things,” Chandle added, “so the idea is how do we enable and empower our creator community?”
Overall, the creative community has a strong relationship with AI. Some have raised concerns over copyright issues, for example, while others see AI as making creative tools more affordable.
Chandli said the response to the Symphony digital avatar from brands and creators has been positive so far.
Going viral in multiple languages also allows brands to capitalize on these moments in ad revenue by using products like TikTok Pulse for targeted placement with brand-appropriate content. These AI tools also level the playing field on marketing spend to highlight smaller, lesser-known brands.
“In the U.S., for example, alone, we have 7 million small businesses that use the platform to build their businesses, build their brands, reach audiences they wouldn't reach anywhere else,” Chandli said. can.” TikTok is democratizing advertising. In this context.”
While TikTok is increasingly looking like an “everything app,” as Elon Musk planned for X, formerly Twitter, Chanley notes that there are nuances.
“It's important to recognize that it's an entertainment platform today, first and foremost … versus a social platform,” he said. “Now we're also adding things like shopping and live capabilities within TikTok, which is an important part of the user experience. So we'll continue to build features and functionality and innovate to make it even more important.” will bring as much as people want into their lives.”
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