China’s ByteDance is testing an AI tool called Ripple. The free app for creating music and editing audio is being made available in closed beta in the U.S. with a small group of invited testers. Aimed at creators who want to up their sound game, Ripple is designed in the manner of a portable smart digital audio workstation (DAW). Ripple incorporates what TikTok’s parent company ByteDance calls a “virtual recording studio” that allows users to record and edit audio files on a mobile device, and the company plans to release additional mobile-friendly audio tools.

“With Ripple, users can directly sing or hum a melody into the app, after which it will use machine learning to expand the melody and turn it into an instrumental song,” TechCrunch reports. “The app’s model was trained on music that is licensed to or owned by ByteDance.”

At present, Ripple can create only instrumental musical output, but presumably ByteDance plans to expand its functionality to include lyrics.

Pocket-lint points out that “TikTok is one of the most popular apps for video creation,” and music is an important component and likens Ripple to “ChatGPT but for music creation.” The app takes “the complex process of working with a digital audio workstation.”

“Our vision is to support creators to expand their inspiration into music,” ByteDance says at Ripple.club, where those who want to try it are directed to contact ByteDance via email. Ripple also had a limited release in in the UK and Europe last year. There is no indication as to the duration of the closed beta phase.

“Although Ripple doesn’t have a direct integration with TikTok, ByteDance sees creators using the app to create background audio for their short-form videos,” TechCrunch reports, citing a spokesperson for the company saying that it’s easy to create music in Ripple and sync it to a TikTok video for an instant soundtrack. All that is required is to “create a track on Ripple and then click to share it to TikTok.”