Chinese short films created with AI attract billions of views

AI short films have become a new growth segment of the Chinese short video market, which is already leading the world. This type of movie is often divided into several episodes, each episode lasting from a few tens of seconds to a few minutes, created by algorithms instead of real actors and scenes. Thanks to cost savings for producers, AI short films are increasingly popular, especially in the context of audiences becoming more forgiving.

AI short films attract many viewers

Data from analytics platform DataEye shows that AI movies with digital characters accounted for 38% of the top 100 manju movies (short films adapted from web novels, comics or original scripts) in January, up sharply from 7% in the same period last year. The total views of this type of movie on the January chart reached 2.55 billion. Post-apocalyptic movie title Apocalyptic Cold Wave: I Have a Mobile Fortress topped the chart after attracting 230 million new views.

Theo Ecnsaudiences are increasingly accepting AI short films partly because the characters are becoming more realistic, reducing the “uncanny valley” effect – the feeling of discomfort with objects that resemble people but are not real. One of the popular themes is magical cultivation, often adapted from web novels, built on familiar motifs such as the character reincarnating and starting the journey “upstream”.

Chen Kun, director and producer of short film AI Mirror of Mountains and Seasbelieves that many people watch movies on phone screens while traveling or working, so they often do not notice the image distortions that this technology causes. “Even if it hasn’t reached the production quality of traditional cinema, AI can still meet the requirements of short films as a first step forward,” he told AFP.

Mirror of Mountains and Seas filled with dramatic plot twists, combined with strange monsters and handsome characters. The film debuted on the short video app Kuaishou in July 2024 and reached more than 50 million views in just about a month. “If you watch without thinking much, you can ignore some illogical details in the image,” shared an audience member with the account name Tiger Mum.

Nine-tailed Fox Demon Falls in Love with Mean AI short film with magical images and many absurd details about the male nine-tailed fox, caused a fever last August when it reached more than 170 million views. The film received many mixed comments, from “it doesn’t make any sense” to “can’t stop watching, it’s so captivating”. Radii Confusion and oddity are also addictive elements, suitable for attracting viewers on platforms like Douyin and Bilibili.

AI helps movie producers save effort

“AI is very accessible, greatly reduces production costs and makes everything a lot faster,” Odet Abadia, a lecturer at Shanghai Vancouver Film School, told AFP. Abadia guides students on how to use AI tools in most stages of filmmaking. For example, when entering a command into Dzine, an artificial intelligence photo editing platform, students will receive images of polar bears and explorers for use in nature documentaries in just a few seconds.

“Using AI is also a way of telling stories. You can create a wow factor and a lot of crazy things, especially with short films,” Abadia said. She designed a virtual production assistant using Qwen software from Alibaba technology group. In just a few seconds, it created a rough plot about a wedding photographer who accidentally becomes entangled in a criminal conspiracy. According to Abadia, students need to face a future where every job in the film industry will require the use of AI.

To produce the film, director Chen used various artificial intelligence platforms, including ChatGPT for the script, Midjourney for creating stills, Kling for converting photos into videos, and Suno for the soundtrack. “For epic battle scenes that require complex special effects and techniques, AI helps us reduce production time and costs by more than 75%,” he explained on Sixth Tone about the filmmaking process Mirror of Mountains and Seas.

With low-budget short films, few actors and little time, filming epic battle scenes was a big worry. Now, AI can solve the problem thanks to its ability to “summon” an army of digital actors.

“With the great advancement of large language models (LLM), the process has become smoother, more accurate and extremely efficient. What used to take me days to do, AI can complete in minutes with greater seamlessness and realism,” Zhang Shiyu, a post-production technician at Dongyang Gewuzhizhi Culture Media, told Xinhua.

Some Chinese companies even develop their own large language models. For example, Huace Group develops an internal AI model for summarizing, evaluating, and scripting. It can quickly provide preliminary reviews for novels up to 1.2 million words long. Work that previously took a team of employees 10-14 days can be completed by AI in 1-2 hours. Combining AI screening and manual review, Huace Group increased overall efficiency by more than 50%.

Ecns Evaluation, in the context of Chinese cinema generally slowing down, AI movies have become attractive to producers because they allow tighter control of production time and personnel costs, bringing expectations of revenue growth. However, this film format still has many limitations such as inconsistent sound and images, and less natural facial expressions and mouth expressions. AI movies also face legal risks, especially regarding the rights to use digital images because some characters have similar appearances to real actors, causing complaints from fans.