On April 27, according to the Wall Street Journal, in the biblical historical drama "King of David" produced by Amazon, real actors played fallen angels and mortal women, and the surrounding landscape was an AI-generated masterpiece, such as a gloomy steel-gray sky and rugged mountain ridges.
Figure 1: The background of "The Dynasty of David" is generated using AI
There were 850 visual effects shots in the show's first season, 73 of which were created using generative AI, including a tool developed by Chinese video site Kuaishou. Wonder Project, the producer of the show, said this saves the cost of expensive on-location filming.
From Hollywood blockbusters to social media short videos, video creators are increasingly turning to AI to produce content that once required large crews of videographers.
“As production costs drop, the threshold for creators to experiment and test new ideas also lowers,” said Zeng Yushen, head of operations at Kuaishou Video’s large model Keling AI. The AI model developed by the company was used in the production of "King of David".
China video big model leads the way
Although most Americans may not be aware of it when watching TV or scrolling through videos on their phones, China is playing an important role in this area. Chinese companies account for seven of the top 10 video generation models ranked by review platform Artificial Analysis, which compete with rivals such as Google and Elon Musk’s xAI.
This month, a video generation model called "HappyHorse" went viral after beating U.S. rivals in a blind quality assessment. Later, Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba revealed that the model was its own.
Figure 2: China accounts for 7 of the top ten video models
Earlier this year, Bytedance launched its latest AI video generator, Seedance 2.0, which also attracted much attention. It can convert text prompts into realistic short movie scenes. ByteDance’s TikTok competes with Kuaishou, which has hundreds of millions of users in China.
Tilly Zhang, a technology analyst at research firm Gavekal, said these platforms "naturally have massive amounts of labeled short video data that can be used for model training. This creates a data barrier that is difficult for most companies to replicate."
Video Model Challenges
OpenAI recently decided to shut down its Sora video generation service and terminate its partnership with Disney. Other U.S. companies such as Google continue to invest actively in this field.
Sora’s shutdown highlights the technical and legal challenges facing AI video. Generating a video can take hundreds of times more computing power than a chatbot application producing a text answer. OpenAI hopes to avoid investing in fringe projects that consume too much computing power in order to focus on products with higher profit margins.
Copyright issues also plague the industry. ByteDance has delayed the release of its Seedance update in the U.S. after opposition from Hollywood. In China, some well-known actors have also recently publicly condemned the unauthorized use of their likenesses in AI-generated videos.
Figure 3: OpenAI shuts down Sora
The Chinese video platform iQiyi has been embroiled in controversy recently. When its CEO Gong Yu introduced an AI project that includes a celebrity portrait licensing library, he said: "Photography with real actors may soon become a thing of the past." As soon as this statement came out, many well-known actors quickly spoke out and stated that they had nothing to do with the project.
Still, AI video is becoming increasingly integrated into people's daily online lives, especially in China but also in the United States, where the two superpowers are influencing each other. Earlier this year, a series of absurd short AI spoofs of martial arts movies garnered billions of views on Chinese social media and inspired a large number of fans to create similar videos. The original videos were produced by a Chinese food company using ByteDance’s AI tools to promote its braised duck product.
Some Chinese video modeling startups are investing in "world models," which are designed to simulate the physical world. Some researchers say that humanoid robots equipped with excellent world models can exhibit behaviors closer to humans.
Whether it is world model or AI video generation, it is necessary to master the basic mathematical and physical laws of object movement in the real world. Many companies such as Aishi Technology and Shengshu Technology invested by Alibaba are advancing simultaneously in these two technical directions.
Short play AI
The fast-growing short drama industry has become an early adopter of AI video generation technology. These series, which revolve around romance or family feud, run just a few minutes each and are designed to keep viewers glued to their phone screens. Due to the tight pace and frequent plot reversals, viewers are often less sensitive to visual flaws when watching this type of small screen content.
This type of content has exploded in China, and miniseries are being integrated into e-commerce sites and food delivery apps to compete for consumers' attention. Recently, this model has also gradually emerged in the United States. Platforms such as ReelShort and DramaBox built by Chinese founders have generated tens of millions of dollars in revenue from American audiences.
In a studio in the eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou, Shao Zhikun is leading a 60-person AI short drama production team. He said their workflow felt more like playing the lottery than making a movie.
In order to create a usable scene, Shao Zhikun's team needs to repeatedly input prompt words into the AI model, which consumes a lot of time and computing power. Occasionally, he says, the successful clips produced are of sufficient quality to serve as a basis for further polishing. The team also figured out how to save money by first generating cheaper static images, and then using these images as guides to help the model generate videos, thus saving costs.
Shao Zhikun's team uses Bytedance's tools to produce 100 short dramas every month for platforms such as Bytedance's Hongguo Short Drama and ReelShort. Shao Zhikun said that production costs range from a few hundred US dollars to more than 10,000 US dollars, which is only a small part of the traditional budget.
The 29-year-old team leader said: "The logic here is different. We are not trying to create artistic masterpieces. As long as one or two dramas become hits, the cost can be recovered."
Similar to video games, miniseries try to lure viewers in with free episodes or trailers, then require them to pay or watch ads to unlock subsequent content. They may also include commercial breaks within the show.
Zeng Yushen, head of operations at Kuaishou Keling AI, said demand from the entertainment industry is also growing outside of China. Miracle Pictures, the producer of the "King of David" series, revealed that in the second season, the number of shots produced using generative AI tools was more than four times that in the first season.
Zeng Yushen said that 70% of Keling's revenue comes from outside China, and the United States is its main market. Kuaishou said it plans capital expenditures of approximately US$3.8 billion this year, mainly to meet Keling’s growing computing power needs.
"I predict that within the next year or two, AI videos will reach a level where it is really difficult for people to tell the difference between authenticity and fakeness," Zeng Yushen said. "This technology will become a mainstay in the film and entertainment industry."