TikTok announces 'TikTok AI Alive' feature that converts photos into videos

TikTok announced its first creative feature , TikTok AI Alive , on May 13, 2025. AI Alive is a feature that allows you to easily animate uploaded photos with AI, and is only available in the TikTok Story camera.

Introducing AI Alive: Bringing Your Photos to Life on TikTok Stories - Newsroom | TikTok

Select a photo from your album. Only photos shared in your story are available. You will see the AI Alive icon on the right toolbar of the photo editing page.

Choose the prompts TikTok suggests for the type of movie you want to create from your photos, or enter your own text.

A movie will be generated from your photos and published to your Stories feed.

Below is a story of testing AI Alive published by Engadget. From a photo of a cat standing on a handrail, three types of movies were created: 'Move like an anime', 'Walk slowly along the handrail', and 'Retro game style'. As a result, in 'Move like an anime', an animated cat moves forward on two legs, in 'Walk slowly along the handrail', a realistic cat moves from a photo with unnatural tails and limbs, and in the third 'Retro game style', a movie of a cat standing up with a wine glass for some reason was created.

According to ByteDance, which operates TikTok, they are always developing with safety in mind, and AI Alive is also undergoing multiple reliability and safety checks to protect the community. To prevent the creation of content that violates policies, uploaded photos and AI-generated prompts, as well as videos created with AI Alive, are reviewed by moderation technology. A final safety check is conducted when the creator posts the story, and anything that seems to violate the rules can be reported as a violation in the same way as regular content.

ByteDance also states that stories created with AI Alive are given 'AI-generated labels' and that it also places importance on transparency. In addition, AI Alive stories are embedded with C2PA metadata that can distinguish between real photos and AI-generated fakes, so that even if they are downloaded from TikTok and shared outside of TikTok, they can be identified as AI-generated.

At the time of writing, AI Alive is only available in TikTok's Stories feature, which is designed for more ephemeral sharing than regular posts. ByteDance says, 'We're excited to see how creators use AI Alive to enhance their storytelling, share authentic moments, and inspire creativity across the TikTok community.'