TikTok's parent unveils AI that generates viral videos from text

Tiktok's parent company, ByteDance, has released another AI text-to-video model. The project, entitled Goku, allows users to convert text into hyper-realistic ad videos, many of which draw clear inspiration from the real-life reels we see on social media.

The project's GitHub page showcases examples of the tool in action, ranging from landscape demos to portrait videos to marketing footage. Some of the most jarring examples are the ones that look the simplest: people eating food, unboxing products, or doing their makeup. While you can still notice that uncanny AI feeling to many of them, the gap is beginning to close on being able to differentiate AI content from real ones.

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(Credit: ByteDance)

The Goku model is a 'flow-based video generative foundation model' jointly developed by the University of Hong Kong and ByteDance. Released in February 2025, industry insiders believe that the newest model 'significantly improved' the visuals' consistency, controllability, and richness. The model is based on the 'rectified flow transformer architecture' and can generate images and videos with simple text prompts.

Aside from general content creation, Goku+, the premium model, is designed explicitly with advertising in mind. The company's research boasts that you can optimize advertising scenarios to create useable footage at '100 times lower cost'. Naturally, brands will understand the upside of leveraging such a tool.

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(Credit: ByteDance)

The video style in the examples closely resembles what you'd see on TikTok. Being owned by ByteDance, it's only logical that they've leveraged its wealth of user data to create these clips. While the results are impressive, it poses some interesting questions about what online content will look like in the near future.

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