How TikTok's New Text-To-Speech Feature Became A Meme Star

Nothing thrives in the cutthroat world of social media without its fair share of innovation, and as the briefest exploration of TikTok will tell you, much of this platform’s ingenuity comes from its extensive library of effects. Whether you want a chipmunk voice or you’re in need of a full green screen, there’s an option to make your creative vision a reality — and more importantly, allow you to contribute to its latest trends.

Some of these are more throwaway, meme-worthy options, but others are integral to its functioning as a platform. For example, the interactivity that drives many TikTok phenomena would be completely unthinkable without the ease of access provided by the Duet function.

However, there have been some areas in which this myriad of effects has lagged, some of which happen to be more important than others. According to compliance standards, accessibility options are not technically a legal requirement for social media. So, when TikTok’s text-to-speech feature was rolled out last month, it was considered by some as long overdue. More unusual though, this function has enjoyed use by an audience much bigger than who it was intended for.

Pretty much every big social media platform offers some basic accessibility options, many of which offer voiceover as a feature for visually impaired users — but none of which have captured the imagination of their general content-creating public like TikTok. A new way to test the creative boundaries of TikTokers everywhere, the disembodied voice became the platform’s newest rising star.

In part, the popular uptake of text-to-speech is thanks to its integration in the app, making it an easy option to select whenever you type out text as opposed to being buried deep in the settings. On top of that, the feature could thrive because of the precedent that had been set for it. Voice effects are an inescapable part of the TikTok experience, increasing your dramatic range or even simply adding some extra interest to a basic storytime. The shaky, distorted voice, known officially as the vibrato effect, has been a favorite in this respect.

In contrast to its entertainment-led predecessors, the use of text-to-speech has focused a lot more on its abilities as a standalone device. While in some respects the feature gets a similar treatment to many other voice effects, what pushed it to viral fame was that it had the substance to be treated as a character, as opposed to just a gimmick.

The TikTok genre that emerged around the feature most often sought its amusement from finding its boundaries, anthropomorphizing it and blaming both real and imagined faults on its developing personality (one particularly jarring video links the feature to the serial killer fandom, claiming it mispronounces Ted Bundy as "daddy").

Many TikTokers became so accustomed to the generic, American female voice that they got upset when their version spoke as a British male. Others even requested that a name be found for the feature, although as of yet she appears to remain nameless.

The way in which the effect has been used is comparable to that of virtual assistants like Alexa and Siri. While both are already several years old, they continue to have recurring roles in different meme formats and viral videos. Their novelty factor is retained through variations on themes that exploit the robot versus human dynamic, periodically having their abilities taken in new and unexpected directions.

TikTok’s text-to-speech may be more restricted than a full-fledged AI, but the premise of testing its technological limits remains similar. A previous meme that its use bears a close resemblance to is Siri, What’s My Name, in which iPhone owners asked their phone to call them by long strings of random letters, leading to some outlandish pronunciations. Many text-to-speech TikToks take this premise one step further, except they build the identity around the voice rather than their own whims. For the many who use TikTok as an isolated and bedroom-bound hobby, the meme acted as a palate cleanser in their content, making way for something new without disturbing their comfort zone.

The hype has died down somewhat, leaving text-to-speech to live up to its original purpose, but if its predecessors are anything to go by, there is still room for a memetic revival somewhere down the line. The feature is more than a gimmick, and on one level, its popularity helps normalize what may otherwise be an underutilized tool. One thing that can be agreed on is it remains a technology that is still a work-in-progress. Also, it’s always really funny to try and get a robot to say "quesadilla."

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