More than 12,000 parents are urging TikTok to more clearly label AI-generated influencers who could pass as real people to viewers.
The parents, in an online petition addressed to TikTok CEO Shou Zi Chew, said they’re concerned that AI influencers — who often show off AI-perfected faces and bodies in their content — may contribute to unrealistic beauty standards and body dysmorphia for children and teenagers.
The letter is sponsored by nonprofit ParentsTogether, which advocates for policies to make the internet safer for kids.
“Virtual influencers” have been around for years, but parents say the more recent explosive growth of generative AI technology has made it harder for casual social media users, especially children, to distinguish between real and artificial content.
Since early last year, TikTok has required creators to label all realistic AI-generated content, and the platform allows accounts to apply the label through a toggle function.
ParentsTogether campaign director Shelby Knox said that’s not enough to ensure consistent labeling. Oftentimes, she said, these videos remain unlabeled, and viewers wouldn’t know they were watching an AI content creator unless they visited their profile.
Many of these accounts note in their bios that they are virtual influencers, although they don’t explicitly label their content or persona as being AI-generated. Others tend to bury disclosures like “#aiinfluencer” in the hashtags of their videos.
“I’m not sure that your average kid knows that a virtual influencer is industry speak for, ‘This person isn’t real,’” Knox said. “So because these companies are making money on TikTok’s platform and it is contributing to a dangerous culture, our view is that TikTok has a responsibility to come in and figure out how to consistently and visibly label these accounts and these videos.”
A spokesperson for TikTok wrote in an email that the platform has removed three of the accounts flagged in…
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