UNGA 2026: Building a Trusted and People-Centered Digital World

TikTok joined governments, international organizations, policymakers, and business leaders at the 81st United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) High-Level week to advance a shared priority: building a more trusted and people-centered digital world.

At TikTok, our mission is simple: to inspire creativity and bring joy. We are a global discovery platform for more than a billion people who come to TikTok to learn and express themselves, explore a new city, or find their next career. For millions of creators, entrepreneurs, and small businesses, TikTok has also become a meaningful economic engine for the communities where they live and work. Through UNGA, we aim to strengthen collaboration with global leaders and policymakers to help ensure that digital innovation continues to foster economic opportunity, closes digital divides, and aligns with global standards for sustainable economic growth.

All of this depends on trust with our UN partners and the 150 markets in which TikTok operates. It also depends on ensuring that powerful technologies like AI are developed and deployed responsibly-so they expand access, strengthen creativity, and keep people in control.

From Digital Discovery to Meaningful Economic Outcomes

The For You feed is where TikTok recommends new content based on people's interests, helping them find creators, ideas, products, and communities they seek out, may never have searched for or found on their own. Through the For You feed on TikTok, AI helps us build a platform dedicated to curiosity and discovering new things rather than around social connections. This is especially powerful for small businesses on the platform to find new customers.

In the United States alone, more than 8.5 million businesses are powered by TikTok. As announced in PF Global's TikTok U.S. 2026 Economic Impact Report released today, these businesses helped contribute $81 billion to the GDP, and support more than 400,000 jobs across America. Among these business owners is groundbreaking entrepreneur Shaina Rainford, who joined TikTok's Ziad Ojakli, Head of Public Policy for the Americas, at the UN Headquarters to share how she transformed family hair remedies into one of America's fastest-growing haircare brands. As the founder and CEO of Bask & Lather (@baskandlatherco), Shaina has used TikTok to share her story, build brand affinity, cultivate a highly engaged community, and drive meaningful business growth. Bask & Lather achieved 1,400% growth from 2024 to 2026, generated more than $20 million in TikTok Shop GMV from January through August 2026, and earned #1-ranking products on TikTok. Today, it stands as one of America's fastest-growing privately owned companies.

TikTok Head of Public Policy for the Americas Ziad Ojakli and TikTok Shop Seller and CEO of Bask & Lather Shaina Rainford speak at the Digital@UNGA panel at the United Nations Headquarters. September 21, 2026 Photo Credit: ITU/M. Jacobson-Gonzalez

We see the same economic dynamics in other markets around the world. In Brazil, for example, advertising and marketing on TikTok has added over $2.7 billion to the country's GDP and supported tens of thousands of new jobs. And in Europe, businesses advertising on TikTok generated €31 billion in economic value in 2025 and added 10 billion pounds to the UK economy.

AI Tools for Small Businesses

TikTok's AI tools and resources can expand opportunities for businesses of all sizes, leveling the playing field and enabling them to create professional content, engage with clients, and be discovered regardless of budget, background or location. This drives economic growth for them and their local communities.

Tools like TikTok Symphony, a suite of generative AI powered creative solutions designed to help advertisers create, optimize and scale content with the purpose of reducing friction in the creative process so brands can create higher quality content, move faster and unlock new opportunities for growth. For example, marketing agency ADDITIVE used Symphony Agent to bring Austrian hotel Fernblick Montafon own photos to life as engaging videos showcasing its mountainside setting. With no new shoot needed, they cut production time and increased click-through rates, making it easier for travelers on TikTok to discover them.

TikTok's AI Policy Lead Tom Varghese speaks with Foreign Policy's Rishi Iyengar on how TikTok's AI tools empower small businesses. September 22, 2026 Photo Credit: Jonathan Heisler

Driving Trust Through Responsible AI Innovation

Trust is critical to enabling the use of new technologies, it's what allows creators to share openly, small businesses to invest confidently, and communities to connect across regions and different parts of the world, safely.

Our Responsible AI principles govern how we use AI at TikTok, by embedding transparency, accountability, fairness, privacy and safety into our systems by design. These principles apply across AI-powered experiences on our platform-from building content moderation directly into our generative AI features, to giving people tools to spot, shape and understand their experience with AI on TikTok. In conversation with Foreign Policy Magazine, TikTok's AI Policy Lead Tom Varghese laid out our approach at UNGA:

• Spot: For years, we've championed investments in labeling, watermarking and shared technical standards to help people distinguish when something is generated or significantly edited by AI. And we've used these technologies to label over three billion videos as AI generated since we started this work.
• Understand: We've also expanded our AI literacy work. Last year, we established an AI Literacy Fund where we partnered with 20 AI expert organizations worldwide, from Common Sense Media to the News Literacy Project, to create educational content to help teach people how to use AI responsibly.
• Shape: We give people control over their experiences with AI by building tools that shape how and when they interact with this technology. For example, we provide numerous tools to help people personalize their For You feed recommendations, including a new feature that lets people choose how much AI-generated content they want to see.
  
  

Our Continued Commitment to a Trusted Digital World

The creator and platform economies are fundamentally changing the way that people and small businesses can interact with and reach audiences, and access goods and services around the world. We see TikTok's role as an enabler of these connections.

As technologies like AI continue to redefine the digital landscape, public-private collaboration becomes even more essential. Grounding our platform in trust, safety, and responsible innovation ensures that technological progress benefits everyone, everywhere. We remain committed to working alongside the United Nations, governments, and global leaders to build a transparent, trusted, and human-centered digital future.