AI has invaded the content industry in a big way. Which listed film and television and animation companies have made plans?

文|雷报 Xiaoyan

Editor|Nurhahaci

It has been more than half a year since OpenAI released ChatGPT, and the AI ​​wave it brought is still continuing or causing turmoil in various industries. A few days ago, we just took inventory and analyzed the current impact of the development of AI on the game industry. Many game companies have already been deeply involved in the game and truly applied it to products and other levels.

Today, let’s look at the “film and television” and “animation” companies that are also closely related to it. What are their attitudes towards AI? And how to use it, and at what level? Based on this, what new changes and opportunities are there in the industry?

"Which" listed film and television and animation companies are paying attention to or using AI? Why?

From the perspective of "film and television companies", leading film and television companies in the industry such as Baina Qiancheng, Enlight Media, Huace Film and Television, Ciwen Media, Bona Pictures, Huayi Brothers, etc. are paying attention to or applying AIGC and other AI technologies Or use it to integrate into the company's products or strategic development goals.

Ciwen Media claimed in its 2022 annual report: “From 2023, the world will enter the AI ​​era.”. AI technology will rapidly penetrate into various fields and profoundly change all walks of life. AI technology has a dual role in the film and television industry. On the one hand, it can reduce costs and improve efficiency, and on the other hand, it can strengthen and expand the value of intellectual property. Driven by market demand, technology, and capital for innovation, platforms and film and television companies will work together to innovate and break through the traditional single business model, embrace changes in new technologies, and increase investment in supporting R&D for content. Accelerating learning and application is necessary because AIGC is expected to have a disruptive impact on the film and television industry. ”

Screenshot from Ciwen Media 2022 Annual Report

According to Ciwen, the promotion of AI is crucial to the industry in which it operates. On the one hand, it can reduce production costs and improve efficiency, and on the other hand, it can promote the value of IP. Baina Qiancheng, who once launched the animated film "The Young Lion", mentioned in its 22nd annual report that digital economic policies continue to reap dividends, and AIGC helps the film and television business reform and business model innovation. Ciwen also mentioned this latter point in the annual report.

Specifically, “For the media field where content is the core output, the automation and multi-modal content generation brought about by the development and iteration of generative AI can deeply empower the content industry (especially the animated film industry) , constantly brings upgrades to the content creation model, which not only improves production efficiency and reduces production costs, but also brings better visual effects to the audience, thereby achieving higher commercial value. For live-action film and television dramas, the continuous innovation of technology It will gradually solve the core pain point of the film and television industry - the issue of front-end IP ownership, thereby bringing about changes in the overall business model."

To put it simply, Baina Qiancheng believes that AIGC will have a more significant impact on the animated film industry. It can reduce costs and increase efficiency while changing the content creation model, and can also provide a better experience for the audience; AIGC has a strong influence on live-action film and television works It can also bring benefits. Overall, it can bring about "change" in the industry's business model. The reason why it is optimistic about and attaches great importance to AIGC is that it sees the popularity of AI and AIGC in the content industry, and AI represented by a series of AI tools such as GPT-4, Wen Xinyiyan, Adobe Firefly, Microsoft Copilot, etc. The level of technological intelligence continues to improve.

Baidu’s generative AI product Wen Xinyiyan announced in March this year that Baina Qiancheng would become its first batch of ecological partners. In the future, Baina Qiancheng will apply Baidu's intelligent dialogue technology achievements to the company's multi-level film and television expression formats (including but not limited to movies, drama series, short videos, short and medium-sized dramas, video film and television games, super short series, etc.) and IP online operation fields such as virtual people and virtual anchors.

Enlight Media’s actions on AI are also very eye-catching.

At the end of March, Enlight Company officially announced their animated film "Go to Your Island" and also released the film's first poster. It is worth mentioning that the poster clearly says "This poster is produced by AI". Guangguang spared no effort to convey the role of AI in the company's production and business activities, such as the AI ​​poster production process in the form of videos with related topics. On the day of the official announcement, the official Weibo also released a set of 9 posters. The same Alternative posters for films that indicate "produced by AI". Related topics have been trending on Weibo, attracting strong attention from both within and outside the industry.

In the 2022 annual report, Enlight Media mentioned, “The company is concerned about the significant changes that the advancement of AI technology will bring to film production, especially animated film production, and has deployed exploratory practices of AI technology internally to actively Find the integration point with content creation.”

It is obvious that Enlight’s attitude towards AI is very positive and urgent. Correspondingly, on March 19, it was confirmed that it was an “internal letter to Enlight employees” written by Wang Changtian, chairman of Enlight Media. It talks about AI very extensively, or this letter was written because of AI. Wang Changtian mentioned, “In the past year or two, AI technology has developed at an unprecedented rate, showing a trend of accelerating iterative upgrades; and the progress of ChatGPT this year has made me more convinced of the next combination of AI technology and content creation. It is about to enter a substantial stage and will bring major changes to the film and television industry. It will not necessarily change the final form of the product, but it is likely to change the production method of the product. We need to actively think and take action to deeply explore the role of artificial intelligence in film production. Application in key links.”

In addition, it also pointed out: "With the continuous advancement of artificial intelligence technology, the speed of future updates and iterations will be faster. The rapid mastery and application of new technologies and new methods will be the key to a company or individual." One of the core competencies. The future belongs to those who can creatively use AI."

Full text of internal letter

There is also Huace Film and Television, which mentioned in its 22nd annual report, “In the context of the recovery and development of the cultural film and television industry, especially technological innovation represented by AI technology has a profound impact on the production methods and commercial application scenarios of the entire industry. It has considerable reshaping power. The company attaches great importance to the impact and opportunities brought by technological changes, and it is the consensus of all employees to fully embrace artificial intelligence technology." And it said that AIGC will become a booster for the development of cultural and creative industries.

Bona Pictures recently stated that they are filming a costume action film called "Legend" and using artificial intelligence technology to restore the role played by Jackie Chan when he was young. It also hopes that through dynamic observation and effective application of new technologies, it can effectively help the company reduce costs and increase efficiency; Wang Zhonglei of Huayi Brothers also mentioned some time ago that Huayi Brothers will deeply explore high-quality micro-short dramas, live broadcasts, The potential of AI in three directions to explore new ways to generate income from open source. It also mentioned in an internal letter, "AI can not only become a tool for us to improve creative efficiency, but also become a test field for us to integrate innovative business formats and activate the value of IP."

At the level of animation companies, Lei Bao found that listed animation companies such as Huaqiang Fantawild stated in their 2022 annual report that they would increase investment in research and development of key technologies in the Metaverse such as AI technology; and develop application-level applications in the two directions of AI voice and AIGC. R&D etc. Ruwuzhi Animation also stated that the company is actively researching and trying cutting-edge AI technologies including new AIGC and ChatGPT in multiple business scenarios such as art, comics and creativity; and head animation and IP company Aofei Entertainment reported in its 22nd annual report Zhong said, "The rapid development of AI technology is also accelerating the application of new technologies in the industry. The integration of AIGC in text creation, audio creation, video generation, picture generation and other scenarios is expected to start a new round of cultural industry changes, further Intensify market competition." He also said that if the company fails to proactively grasp the development trends of new technologies and timely embrace the changes in production methods brought about by AIGC, it may have an adverse impact on the company's long-term operating performance. ”

Screenshot of Aofei 22nd Annual Report

In addition, in addition to these listed companies, in previous interviews with animation companies, we also mentioned that Xuanji Technology, China Film every year, 2:10 and other leading companies in the industry are also using AI. Of course, this is only in the industry. part of the industry, coupled with some relatively low-key companies and the emergence of related applications. In fact, based on the interview, the "AI animation industry" has also become a general trend. This is consistent with the previous listed film and television companies who mentioned the impact of AI on animation works. The impact will be very large and consistent.

At the same time, AI is nothing new to the animation industry, but it can be seen that the related technology is becoming more mature, and its application will gradually deepen.

Overall, whether it is the film and television industry or the animation industry, companies have already felt the unstoppable momentum of the AI ​​wave. Practitioners generally believe that achieving growth in business value by reducing costs and improving efficiency is the core. At the same time, research and application of AI need to be really accelerated.

What are film, television and animation companies using AI? To what extent?

Let’s first look at companies that use AI more “deeply”. In addition to the aforementioned use of AI to generate movie characters by Bona, Baina Qiancheng also disclosed in its 2022 annual report that the company has begun to try to integrate related AI technologies in the production of the animated film "The Lion Boy", in terms of digital characters and scenes. , animation performances, etc., it has achieved an improvement in picture quality and greatly improved production efficiency. For example, there are more than 1,800 spectators in the Lions game finals, which are automatic animations automatically generated by AI based on 4 basic character models.

With the assistance of AI technology, it enabled a 150-person animation team to complete all the production work of "The Young Lion" within 16 months, significantly improving production efficiency.

Not only that, the company plans to gradually apply AI technology in the early stage of assisting character development and animation storyboards in the process of preparing for animated films such as "Lion 2", "Sunday Boy" and "Sword Boy". Production, concept design, scene and action generation, sound synthesis, promotional materials and other processes. At the same time, AI can also empower the company’s virtual image and IP.

The two pictures are the scene design and character makeup generated by our own animation-assisted model (from Baina Qiancheng Daily)

Guangguang Media stated in its 22nd annual report that "the current development of AI technology is changing with each passing day, which can effectively help the company's film and television business, especially the rapid development of animated film business." At the same time, in addition to the above mentioned, it is actively looking for integration points in AI content creation. , the development of new technologies and the emergence of new tools will also be an important direction for the company to focus on, explore and practice in the future.

It should be noted that Wang Changtian emphasized in an internal letter that artificial intelligence also has significant innovations in creativity and scripts. Currently, regarding the former, its animation production team is already exploring various applications, such as AI animation performance, AI generated character and scene assets, AI generated dynamic effects of hair and clothes, AI automatic lighting rendering, AI used for animation special effects, Virtual filming, spin-off development, and more.

In terms of creativity and scripts, it was mentioned that AI can currently be applied to perform efficient intelligent retrieval and preliminary sorting of literary works, news events, character deeds, etc. according to given requirements, use keywords to generate story outlines, and initially build Script framework, exploring various possibilities of character design, enriching character biographies, verifying the coherence of scripts under different narrative structures, diagnosing problems in already formed scripts, assisting in script revision, and improving characters, plots, dialogues, themes, etc. Provide writing materials, diversify creative perspectives, optimize writing structure, preview the script with pictures or videos, and quickly review and judge possible gaps and flaws between the script and the final production effect in advance.

In its annual report, Huace Film and Television mentioned that it actively applies AIGC to the entire film and television production chain, including content creation, production and publicity and promotion. In the company's business plan for 2023, it stated that it will focus on "text AI" applications and seek to cooperate with external partners to develop AI applications suitable for the creative planning stage, shorten the project development cycle, and at the same time, in the field of "video AI" Make arrangements in advance to amplify the value of IP, explore diverse monetization of content, optimize the talent structure, and introduce complex talents in science and technology, culture, film and television, etc.

Ciwen Media also stated in its 2022 annual report that the company will strive to apply AIGC technology to the entire chain of film and television production such as content creativity, content production, and content promotion. Make full use of AIGC technology to improve the production efficiency of the film and television industry, mainly including film and television script creation, AI face and voice changing, scene and storyboard production, digital human simulation of virtual characters, trailer editing, special effects processing, AI poster production, etc., opening up the industry incremental market space.

AIGC technology-assisted commercial animation "Dog and Boy"

Through previous interviews with animation companies, we learned that virtual characters such as extras are used as supplements; based on big data and artificial intelligence algorithms, the design of characters and scenes can be quickly realized; AI or automated processes are used for "standardization" work; and tools such as AI dialogue platforms help to check and retrieve some information relatively quickly in terms of pre-creation, art, mid- and post-production, and research and development. These are the current effects or assistance of AI to animation companies. beneficial. Of course, the previous film and television companies have also mentioned the use of AI in animation works. Generally speaking, whether it is live-action works or animated works, for the film, television and animation industries, AI has gradually been able to be used in the production and promotion of works. The whole process is assisted.

Are AI and AIGC already perfect?

In an internal letter to employees, Wang Changtian, chairman of Enlight Media, mentioned that it took the company two years to sort out and build the "Chinese Mythical Universe" system. The initial development of the entire system took about 20 to 30 years, and at the same time, it used industry-wide resources. resources and power. In addition, the company has more than a thousand creative ideas and scripts that need to be discussed and judged every year. There are as many as sixty or seventy rolling projects in different stages of production every day, and the creative and script stages may take one or two years.

In fact, it can be seen from this that the film and television industry, including the animation industry, has features such as heavy work production, high time and energy consumption, and "inefficiency", which makes it urgently in need of new technologies and models to bring the production of works to life. Improvement of quality and efficiency. Take the animation industry as an example. It has long been a "labor-intensive industry." An animated series may require dozens or even hundreds of people to work hard for several months, or even longer. It has previously won more than 5 billion It is understood that more than 1,600 people spent three years working on the box office hit "Nezha: The Devil Boy Comes into the World", and it is reported that more than 60 production companies were involved. Everyone "knocked out the difficult special effects in the film bit by bit." Therefore, from the perspective of work content, production model, demand, etc., AI for animation companies is very logical and necessary. The same is true for the film and television industry. There are also some of the same problems, and AI can also help optimize or solve them. .

Although AI technology is available, the content industry still needs to note that it is not yet “mature” enough. For example, Baina Qiancheng stated on the interactive platform that the industry's ability to use AI technology to directly generate animated movies is not yet mature, and the large-scale application of AI technology is still in the "exploration" stage. The company will continue to pay attention to the impact and promotion of ChatGPT and other emerging technologies on AIGC and the entire content industry, and actively seek in-depth cooperation with big data model manufacturers in the field of content production, and gradually realize the application of AI technology in auxiliary character development and animation. Storyboard production, concept design, scene and action generation, sound synthesis, promotional material generation and other scenarios.

Enlight Media recently stated in its investor relations activity record that the use of AI in the production of animated films is still in an exploratory and experimental stage, so it is not yet able to accurately assess the impact of AI on animated film production. efficiency improvement. When the technology matures and is used proficiently, it may be able to increase efficiency by 50%.

"AI may be better at collecting and organizing content, image design, and some aspects of mid-term production of animated films, as well as in sound, lighting, stories, backgrounds, and some less important roles. The application prospects, but the core characters and stories of animated movies still need to be completed manually, so AI cannot be imagined to be omnipotent. It cannot replace human wisdom and labor, but it will improve efficiency."

Enlight Media also stated that in the future, people who can use AI will replace people who cannot use AI. AI itself cannot replace human labor.

《Deep Sea》

In previous interviews with animation companies, relevant practitioners and leaders also mentioned that AI plays more of an "auxiliary" role, and that AI needs standard specimens and data to feed. In summary, artificial intelligence needs further development and is not yet able to completely replace humans. Some practitioners see it as a tool.

Conclusion

AI has attracted the attention and use of other video platforms, such as Tencent, Mango, iQiyi, etc. in addition to film and television companies such as Guangguang, Baina, Huace, etc. The penetration of AI in the film and television industry is comprehensive, which can be reflected from the perspective of participants and their recognition and application of AI technology. Animation companies are continuing and using this technology more deeply.

At the same time, everyone is accelerating exploration at this stage, trying to increase the "presence" of AI in the company's production and operations, so as to improve efficiency and create higher value with less cost, lest they fall behind. Overall, the wave is already unstoppable, and in order to pursue higher profits, these content industry practitioners are maximizing the capabilities of AI, and related explorations should only continue unabated.

As more and more companies and practitioners enter the industry, and as they understand and use AI more deeply, what kind of huge changes will occur in the film, television, animation and other content and IP industries in the future? What new opportunities will it bring? As AI continues to advance, we will wait and see.

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