ByteDance is getting into AI text-to-video. Can it avoid the issues that have plagued OpenAI?

The generative AI industry is in the midst of a contentious moment, but that turmoil isn’t stopping ByteDance from throwing its hat into the ring. The parent company of TikTok has announced the App Store arrival of Jimeng AI, a text-to-video program that rivals OpenAI‘s Sora.

Jimeng AI launched on July 31 on Android and hit the Apple App Store a week later. For now, the app is only available for Chinese users.

Companies based in China have unveiled a slew of AI-powered text-to-video generators since OpenAI made a splash with the launch of Sora in February 2024. Alternatives to that software include Kling AI (which comes from major Chinese video app Kuaishou) and startup-backed options Ying and Vidu.

Some of those services, such as Kling AI, are already available for global audiences. The Chinese companies that are wading into Western markets must be careful to avoid the pitfalls that have plagued OpenAI. In the first days after the reveal of Sora, the Microsoft-backed firm pitched its text-to-video model as a potential player in Hollywood productions.

But the mood soon shifted. In May, Google CEO Sundar Pichai announced an investigation to determine whether OpenAI had trained Sora on creator videos. Over the following months, prominent influencers like Marques Brownlee admonished the practice of unauthorized AI training

, and some creators are even suing OpenAI over its illicit scraping practices.

ByteDance, which is already tied up with numerous regulatory battles, must therefore be careful as it expands Jimeng AI. Its alleged scraping of content from Instagram and Snapchat has already drawn scrutiny, and regulators will surely have their eyes on Jimeng as the model rolls out more widely.

TikTok has debuted some AI-powered features of its own, including a search upgrade launched in tandem with OpenAI’s ChatGPT. Jimeng AI, however, has its own position within ByteDance. According to Reuters, the new app is part of Jianying, the ByteDance division best known for overseeing the video editing software CapCut.

Even if Jimeng can sidestep the criticisms Sora has faced, it will have to solve a different problem: The quality of its results. A test run by South China Morning Post showed that Sora’s results are far more realistic than Jimeng’s — at least for now.