Unrestricted AI Avatar Tool Accidentally Released by TikTok Permits Recitation of Hitler Quotes and Other Harmful Speech

June 21, 2024

TikTok inadvertently released an unfiltered version of its AI digital avatar tool, enabling users to produce videos featuring avatars uttering harmful content. This includes quotes attributed to Hitler.

Initially intended for commercial purposes, the tool was accessible to individual accounts and failed to display a watermark signifying artificial intelligence generation. TikTok has since taken down the tool and admitted to the oversight.

Matched TAIM controls

Suggested mapping from embedding similarity (not a formal assessment). Browse all TAIM controls

MAP 1.6 — similarity 0.607, rank 1. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MEASURE 2.10 — similarity 0.591, rank 2. TAIM detail and related incidents →
MAP 4.1 — similarity 0.591, rank 3. TAIM detail and related incidents →

Alleged deployer: tiktok
Alleged developer: tiktok
Alleged harmed parties: tiktok-users, general-public

Source

Data from the AI Incident Database (AIID). Cite this incident: https://incidentdatabase.ai/cite/790

Data source

Incident data is from the AI Incident Database (AIID).

When citing the database as a whole, please use:

McGregor, S. (2021) Preventing Repeated Real World AI Failures by Cataloging Incidents: The AI Incident Database. In Proceedings of the Thirty-Third Annual Conference on Innovative Applications of Artificial Intelligence (IAAI-21). Virtual Conference.

Pre-print on arXiv · Database snapshots & citation guide

We use weekly snapshots of the AIID for stable reference. For the official suggested citation of a specific incident, use the “Cite this incident” link on each incident page.