TikTok functions as a major global distribution and experimentation environment for virtual beings, including virtual humans, avatars, AI-generated characters, and synthetic personalities, particularly within short-form video culture where algorithmic discovery enables rapid audience scaling. On TikTok, virtual beings are deployed across entertainment, marketing, and cultural contexts through fully virtual influencers, hybrid human–AI personas, stylized avatars, and AI-assisted character performances that rely on face-tracking, voice synthesis, motion capture, and generative visual tools. In the China context, TikTok’s ecosystem (including its mainland counterpart) has been instrumental in normalizing virtual idols, branded digital spokescharacters, and narrative-driven synthetic personas, allowing creators, studios, and companies to test engagement, monetization, and parasocial interaction models at scale. The platform’s emphasis on trends, remixing, and participatory formats makes virtual beings particularly effective, as synthetic characters can be rapidly iterated, localized, and embedded into challenges, livestream commerce, and promotional campaigns, reinforcing TikTok’s role as a key infrastructure layer for the visibility, social acceptance, and commercial viability of virtual beings.
(TikTok is owned by ByteDance, a Chinese technology company founded in Beijing in 2012; however, TikTok operates as an international platform with headquarters outside mainland China and is legally separate from ByteDance’s China-only platform Douyin, which serves the domestic Chinese market.)