Tako's Arrival: TikTok's Dive into AI-Driven Video Search

0:00On the podcast today, we are talking about the latest big tech company that is joining the AI chatbot revolution. and that is TikTok. So TikTok recently announced, well, I guess they didn't technically announce it, it was kind of leaked originally, but then they've verified and clarified that they are currently doing some things. But essentially, this is going to be a new chatbot called Taco, and it's going to be able to respond to questions, make recommendations, very original, I know, right? Sounds like every other one, but it's going to be a little bit different because they're actually integrating this into TikTok.

0:32This isn't just another chat GPT spinoff. Uh, this is a tool that essentially, uh, they say is going to, or is looking like it is going to revolutionize the way a search works on Tik TOK. And by default, I would assume that if it's successful, you know, every company that has copied Tik TOK, uh, you know, Facebook and Snapchat and everyone else, um, it will eventually be integrated into other ones as well. So essentially um some there was a guy named daniel book and he was like one of the uh leakers i guess i don't know if he was allowed to leak it or he pretty much gave the verge some pictures of what the what it actually looked like he says it's going to radically change search navigation and he is from a company called watchful technologies and essentially they just look and kind of find uh these different upcoming app changes for fortune 500 companies then they you know comment on them and what the implications are in any case in the screenshot that he shared with the verge essentially what I'm looking at now is the regular tiktok screen showing a video and on the side where you would normally click like heart or comment or bookmark or share there's another button right above which is like the button of a ghost and you can click that and it will open up taco who it says hey I'm taco feel free to ask me anything and I'll do my best to help you find what you are looking for.

1:54And in the example that was typed in, someone typed in, what is the significance of King Charles III's coronation? And this is actually, I think, really interesting because something like ChatGPT would just respond to you with the answer. But this is you talk to it and ask it a question and it will respond with a video that it thinks answers that question. And it's kind of interesting because it's essentially what ChatGPT is doing with the entire internet's articles, but now it's doing it with video, right? And so I could really easily see this being something that YouTube tries to rip off or a lot of other video libraries, Vimeo perhaps, or even Snapchat with all of their video or Microsoft with Reels.

2:36But essentially, you're chatting with this thing, asking a real question. And instead of giving you a response, it will send you a video or maybe two or three that will go and answer that question, which is like the equivalent of sending you articles. But it's kind of interesting because like in the past, if you've ever used these search features on something like TikTok or Reels, you might search for like a trend or you might search for like a keyword or a few keywords and it will show you like a video that it thinks is relevant for that keyword. But I have never really used this for like, you know, how do you unclog a toilet that's made by General Electric and blah, blah, blah, blah, like something I do on YouTube.

3:11So it seems like TikTok is gonna get much more into this rich kind of response search. So after this was leaked, a spokesperson for TikTok, Zachary Kitzer, he called the chatbot a limited experiment. And he told The Verge that it isn't currently available to users in North America or Europe. But inevitably, he said in a tweet that TikTok actually said the company is going to test this in the Philippines. So they said in their tweet, we're in the early stages of exploring chatbot tools with a limited test of Kotaku with select users in the Philippines. Taco is an AI-powered tool to help with search and discovery on TikTok.

3:49So I think this is really interesting. They also said, we're always exploring new technologies that add value to our community. In select markets, we're testing new ways to power search and discovery, and we look forward to learning from our community as we continue to create a safe place that entertains, inspires creativity, and drives culture. I think this is really interesting when you I will say, though, like there's a disclaimer when you first click on Taco on the app and it says tacos and experimental chatbot. It can answer questions and have conversations with you. Feedback from Taco is AI generated and may not be true or accurate.

4:26So it should not be relied upon as advice on. And this is what's interesting. They specifically call out medical, legal, financial, et cetera. All conversations will be reviewed for safety purposes and to enhance your experience. please do not share your private information with taco so similar to chat gpt they are going to be reading your responses they'll have people manually reviewing them it's not uh you know like a confidential place um there was a recent attorney so right they said like hey this is going to be experimental we're going to test this out in the philippines yada yada but there was recently an attorney named josh gerbert um and he spotted that the tiktok has actually recently filed a trademark application for chatbot software called taco so i think that really just suggests that tiktok is essentially gearing up for a lot wider release than just the philippines it's going to go international i believe um and this isn't going to be the first social media app to jump on the whole chatbot bandwagon right we have uh snapchat that made its ai bot available for everyone for free and even mark zuckerberg recently told a bunch of meta investors that he's going to introduce AI agents to billions of people.

5:32So Facebook has honestly a lot of the same technology as OpenAI and Google, and they've created a lot of the infrastructure, the transformers and different tools that you use to train these AI models. So Facebook has a really strong hat in the ring, in my opinion. And with billions of people using Facebook, I think it's, you know, it's with Facebook and Google and every other tech company implementing these, it's only a matter of time when I would say a majority of the world's population knows, understands and uses AI tools services and chatbots so this is gonna be a really interesting area to continue following in the future