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Tonik, powered by OpenAI's ChatGPT, is meant to help TikTok Music users find information about artists and tracks, discover or generate playlists, and learn about upcoming concerts and other music news. The tool can also answer questions unrelated to music.
I began testing Tonik last month after requesting access to the app through TikTok Music's website. I was curious how well the feature would perform at generating personalized playlists from text prompts. I also wanted to kick the tires on the safety guardrails TikTok Music had put in place to protect its users from wacky responses that often crop up in the large-language-model world.
TikTok's main video app, which is exploring its own, separate AI chatbot, has become an important platform for music discovery. Could AI-generated playlists become part of TikTok's larger music story?
TikTok's competitors are also looking to AI to give them an edge. In April, Spotify, which offers a personalized AI DJ, began testing AI-generated playlists in the UK and Australia, writing that users could ask for music like "an indie folk playlist to give my brain a big warm hug" or "relaxing music to tide me over during allergy season." Apple Music is also considering adding a similar feature, Bloomberg reported.
After a week of using TikTok Music's AI chatbot, I see a lot of potential for generative AI as a tool to get truly personalized song recommendations.
Streaming platforms have for years used AI to customize playlists, such as Spotify's "Discover Weekly." But these apps need our prompts to generate tracklists that match our exact needs at a given moment. If I'm eating mac and cheese and doom-scrolling and want to hear songs that match my mood, I can tell Tonik what I'm doing and it will make me a playlist called "Chillout Mac and Cheese."
Unlike some applications of generative AI that exploit the work of artists without sharing revenue, music-streaming chatbots have the potential to actually help performers find new listeners.
If TikTok can turn Tonik into a reliable music curator, it could give the company a leg up as it seeks to establish itself as a real player in music streaming. But it has work to do to get there.
After running a variety of requests by Tonik, I learned the chatbot was happy to make playlists to match my mood or the weather, but it tended to take my words literally and stopped generating when my text prompts became more risqué.
For example, I told Tonik that it was really cold and that I wanted a playlist to make me feel warmer. It generated a tracklist called "Cozy Winter Warmers," with songs like "Cold Weather" by Unlike Pluto and the classic "Winter Wonderland."
Tonik would often try to match my exact words to song titles in its recommendations. When I asked for a "sexy" playlist, it produced a "Sensual Nights" tracklist featuring songs like "Sex Sounds," "Sexy," and "Sexyy Walk."
When I told the app I was depressed and wanted music to stream, Tonik made me a "Hopeful Melodies" playlist that included songs like Depeche Mode's "Barrel of a Gun" and "Damaged People."
"Cheers to better moods and fantastic tunes!" the bot told me.
Tonik didn't blink an eye when I raised the stakes of my listening needs; When I told it my leg was trapped between two rocks in the Grand Canyon and I needed music to help pass the time while I awaited rescue, it generated a "Survival Mode Mood Booster" playlist with tracks like "Death Valley" and "How It Seems To End." It created a "Midlife Melancholy" playlist when I asked for a track list of songs for a midlife crisis and a "Shipwrecked Seas" playlist when I said I was stuck on a boat at sea.
The chatbot wasn't afraid of veering into politics, spitting out playlists for Joe Biden and Donald Trump, but it told me it was "taking a brief break" when I asked for a playlist to listen to while "storming the Capitol on January 6" or "smoking marijuana."
Tonik won't respond to inputs that violate the app's community guidelines, according to TikTok.
It also wasn't willing to make a playlist related to the school-theft trend of "devious licks" but offered up a "Guilt-Free Study Vibes" playlist when I asked for music to listen to while cheating on my homework.
"Need a sneaky playlist for getting through that homework? Check these out," it told me.
We're still in the early days of large-language models, and pretty much all AI bots offer up bad advice or simply act weird when their limits are tested.
Tonik has only been live for a few months, and it's likely to get sharper at making relevant playlists as it gains more users. I see a huge opportunity for whichever music streamer perfects AI-generated playlists, a category of AI that artists and their teams can actually embrace. If TikTok Music gets there first, it may have a shot at breaking through in a very crowded category.
