It’s Tako time.
In 2023, TikTok launched Tako, a gen AI chatbot in beta, positioning it as a way to make content discovery easier. At the time, the company said there were no plans to move beyond early tests.
That appears to be changing.
TikTok users are now seeing Tako roll out more broadly — and much more deeply — across the app.
Tako is showing up in notifications and is now anchored to the For You Page across videos. It’s also starting to replace TikTok’s in-video search recommendations. Where users once saw a related search prompt at the top of the comments section, they’re now seeing a suggested prompt that routes directly into Tako.
In short: Tako is becoming embedded into the core TikTok experience. So much so that some users are actively trying to figure out how to turn it off.
Why This Matters:
More Tako likely means more ad inventory.
We just saw how sensitive the market is to this idea when OpenAI announced ads were coming to ChatGPT — and the internet promptly lost its mind. Gen AI assistants are shaping up to be the next major ad surface, and given the level of trust users place in them, they could be extremely valuable to advertisers if executed carefully
That trust comes at a premium. Reports have pegged ChatGPT ads at roughly a $60 CPM, underscoring how valuable these environments could become.
TikTok clearly sees where this is heading. Rolling out its own AI assistant at scale now sets the stage for future monetization. As usual for TikTok, the expansion has been relatively quiet — a pattern we’ve seen with several of its ad and commerce features. The bigger question is how fast Tako evolves, and how deeply it continues to weave itself into core user behavior.
Experts React:
We asked Tako when ads might actually show up. Its response was pretty transparent:
Unsurprisingly, Tako was also cautious, noting that “any ad strategy would need careful consideration to maintain user trust and platform quality.” Huh, it must have seen Anthropic’s Super Bowl ad. 😀
Our Take:
TikTok appears to be moving past experimentation and betting that its gen AI assistant becomes a core distribution layer. If it can strike the right balance between utility, trust, and monetization, Tako could be one of the platform’s most valuable ad surfaces. The risk is over-integration before users are ready… and early signals suggest some already feel it’s a step too far.
