Why TikTok star Sophia Smith Galer created an AI tool to help journalists make viral videos

Credit: Mousetrap Media / Frank Noon

When talking about artificial intelligence in the newsroom, there is too much focus on the technology and not enough on what it actually does. We want to help journalists, technophiles or technophobes, to explore this topic in an accessible way. So we are launching a second series of "I am a journalist, what can AI do for me?" that brings stories from your peers who work with editorial robots.

As a successful independent content creator on TikTok, Sophia Smith Galer was always aware of copycats. However, the growing popularity of large language models (LLMs) - advanced AI systems designed to understand and generate human-like text based on extensive training data - made her realise that someone could soon train an AI tool on her content without her consent.

Without any experience in coding, Smith Galer decided to create her own AI tool - Sophina - before someone else did it. Sophina helps users turn text into viral video scripts for TikTok. To train her, Smith Galer used transcripts from around 100 of her TikToks with a certain threshold of views.

"She’s not going to catch your unique style but it’s a really good first draft. You can never record viral videos if you don’t know how to do it," she says about the tool.

Sophina can not only produce a viral script but also save tons of time, which Smith Galer identified as the number one need for overburdened journalists who want to experiment with short-form video.

The power of community

Apart from supporting would-be TikTokers, Smith Galer’s second motivator was continuing professional development (CPD). As a freelancer, she has not got access to any formal programme so she looked to harnessing AI as a way to stretch herself professionally.

She may be a freelancer but she is not alone. With more than half a million TikTok followers and 17 million likes, she tapped into her community’s knowledge when choosing the platform to build her tool. She ended up using Bootstacks, a no-code solution well-suited to those starting up with AI.

She then had to train and retrain Sophina many times. For instance, she had to tell the tool to stop using as many exclamation marks and emojis.

The next phase was to make the tool publicly available. Smith Galer chose to put it behind a paywall, both to make it financially sustainable and to communicate its value. However, she urges NGOs and fact-checkers who wish to use the tool but cannot afford it to get in touch because she "cares about making the internet a better place."

"I’m the first content creator who made a tool like this. I couldn’t have done it if I wasn’t a journalist. But there’s more to it than journalism. It can be used by academia or anyone who has an important message to put out there on TikTok and Instagram where that’s desperately needed.

"It’s an experiment that’s been helpful to me and if it can help others, so much better."

This series is supported by Utopia Analytics, a Finnish company that enables AI-automated moderation in any language of reader comments and cuts down the publishing delay. Inappropriate behaviour, bullying, hate speech, discrimination, sexual harassment and spam are filtered out 24/7 so teams can focus on moderation policy management & engage with readers. Utopia Analytics has no editorial input in the series.

Free daily newsletter

If you like our news and feature articles, you can sign up to receive our free daily (Mon-Fri) email newsletter (mobile friendly).