Earlier this year, TikTok’s Chinese owner ByteDance released the latest version of its Seedance AI video generating tool.
Impressively photorealistic footage of Will Smith battling a ferocious spaghetti monster or Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise engaging in hand-to-hand combat sent Hollywood into a frenzy, highlighting ongoing concerns over the status of human creativity in the age of AI.
It’s not just Hollywood struggling to adapt to a new reality. As the New York Times reports, Chinese directors, actors, and crew share these concerns. They’ve watched as generative AI has caused the number of “microdramas” — ultra-short-form serialized clips optimized for mobile viewing — being produced to skyrocket. The format has caught on like wildfire in China, quickly turning into a massive multibillion-dollar business.
According to the paper, some 50,000 new AI-generated microdramas were added to Douyin, China’s TikTok in March alone. Many of them are racking up hundreds of millions of views, in a growing AI-based content factory estimated to be worth more than $3 billion this year. (The microdrama industry overall is expected to exceed $16.5 billion by the end of the year.)
In other words, it’s no wonder that those who make their living in the country’s entertainment industry are crying foul, especially as controversies over the unlicensed use of the likenesses of Chinese entertainers continue to swirl. (Cases about replacing employees with AI are also currently making waves in the Chinese court system.)
Actor Li Jiao told the NYT that he watched as the number of available roles dried up. He suggested that the hype around AI may be at least partially to blame.
“It’s like it was raining, and then suddenly the rain stopped,” he said.
Microdrama director Wang Yushun admitted to the newspaper that he was making extensive use of AI, lamenting that he had to lay off employees and citing waning demand for live-action productions.
Meanwhile, competition in the industry is ramping up as AI massively lowers the barriers to entry.
The Chinese government is seemingly still on the back foot, with the country’s cyberspace regulator most recently issuing rules to require clear labeling of and consent for the creation of AI-generated “digital humans” while banning services that could get children addicted or misled.
Despite the threat to his career, Li says it’s not necessarily a matter of abandoning AI altogether, highlighting a far more nuanced embrace of the tech in China compared to the outright opposition among a growing cohort of Hollywood AI-listers.
“They’re still just imitating humans or trying to make things more humanlike,” he told the NYT. “They should be trying to unleash more imagination, taking a more unconventional route.”
“After all, our fundamental value as humans is in our ability to imagine,” he added.
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