Breaking Down the TikTok Deal and The First Billion-Dollar AI Influencer
It's been easy to forget that Congress voted to ban TikTok. What a new deal means and how the future of entertainment is shaping up to be humans vs. AI in very unsettling ways...
At long last, a deal was announced last week that shifts the majority of TikTok ownership to a group of US companies and investors in an effort to avoid a complete ban. Problem solved? Not quite.
The platform briefly went dark in January of 2025 after a bipartisan vote to force Chinese divestment of the US platform. A series of executive orders allowed it to run while a deal was hammered out with the site’s Beijing-based owners, ByteDance. And those orders were renewed over and over—causing many users to forget it was even banned at all.
The situation is head-spinning for a number of reasons, including the political flip-flopping, the persistent data privacy issue, and the algorithmic “misinformation” challenge. The big question: does any of that get properly resolved by the new deal?
As the new deal entered the news cycle, so did word that the platform’s most-followed star has sold his likeness as an AI avatar (as part of a $1 billion deal). And this comes after ethical questions arose last week regarding Netflix’s live streaming of Alex Honnold’s skyscraper climb without any protections against a fall (more on that below).
While we often talk about AI mostly in the context of education these days, and have discussed the “slop” (aka video garbage) circulating online, advancements this week show the stakes related to AI vs. human content in entertainment are actually much higher—and more of a ethical quagmire—than we might be ready for...
The New TikTok Deal Falls Flat
I’ve written previously about the national security concerns related to TikTok. And it’s pretty straightforward: the site’s T&Cs allow for storage of our data abroad and access by the parent company and other “partners.”
ByteDance is based in Beijing and the Chinese government has a stake in the business. China also happens to be the world’s largest broker of facial recognition technology, and of course, they are a communist country with no guarantees as to what would happen to US users’ data if stored there.
But unfortunately, to compound things, the sheer size and scope of the platform have made it supremely convenient to politicians, and lucrative commercially to just about every business out there, so no one is completely virtuous here. If they were, the ban would have gone into effect and stayed put.
Is the deal a good one? Meh. ByteDance retains control of the algorithm, the US investors get access to a lot more data than most might be happy with even under this supposedly safer arrangement, and there’s already been unrest over content curation.
The fact is that we must all decide for ourselves. It’s likely more secure, albeit as rich with data extraction as before. And it’s important to remember that all parties involved are motivated by the sheer power and financial influence of TikTok. So who the “good guy” is has become quite obscured in the end.
AI and the Future of Entertainment
Are We Headed Toward a Hunger Games Future?
I wrote this week about the future of “human” entertainment and how it may look like Alex Honnold’s life-or-death live climb of a Taipei skyscraper—the kind of high-stakes spectacle that Free Solo made famous. If AI “performers” start to infiltrate TV and film, what will we then want to see from humans? Will a thrill be the ultimate risk? There’s a lot to think about here »
When an Influencer’s AI Avatar Takes Over the Job
The largest AI-related influencer licensing agreement was inked this week between the most-followed TikTok star, Khaby Lame, and a Chinese firm. The deal is worth nearly $1 billion.
By allowing an AI avatar to be created in his likeness, Khaby can “speak” other languages and easily cross borders. But the deal, of course, raises all sorts of ethical questions about the future of influencer content and who will ultimately control Khaby’s likeness.
Is it a good thing that an influencer can spend a short amount of time building their profile and then sit back and remain forever that age while they go fishing? Or horrifying? The implications are worth pondering…