(Yicai) April 17 -- Following the deluge of artificial intelligence-generated videos over the past year, top executives at Tencent Video and iQiyi, China’s two biggest video-streaming platforms, have said they expect the first blockbuster feature drama created using the technology to be released in the second half of this year.

One production team has already created a truly high-quality long-form drama using AI, which, optimistically speaking, could be released sometime in the next quarter, Sun Zhonghuai, chairman of Tencent Video, said in a speech at the 13th China Internet Audio and Video Convention in Chengdu, which ended yesterday. 

Sun said even though he had made a "radical prediction" at the end of last year that the next 12 months would be a critical window for the emergence of AI-generated feature dramas, progress has been much faster than expected, with a group of small but highly capable creative teams producing some remarkable content.

Gong Yu, chief executive of Baidu-backed iQiyi, made a similar prediction on when a blockbuster feature created using AI would appear.

There are no longer any technical barriers to producing long-form AI dramas, Gong said in a speech at the same convention. The lighting and shadow effects and smoothness of the storytelling in AI dramas have already reached a very high level of realism, he noted.

AI’s penetration into film and television has moved faster than most people in the industry anticipated, and that the change feels irreversible because the underlying way the industry works is being fundamentally rewritten, according to Sun.

 “It’s not only the process of creation that has changed. The creative subject has changed too,” he pointed out.

According to Sun, AI is reorganizing the industry’s entire content supply structure. A creative team of just five to 20 people can now use AI tools to produce content that used to require hundreds of people working together. That means the logic of film and TV production has changed, he said. Scenes that once required separate specialists in art direction, visual effects, lighting, and other areas can now be condensed into a single person’s workflow.

Sun also warned that the explosive growth in AI-generated content will make competition in the industry even more intense. Small creative teams will become a new growth engine, but the bar for making truly outstanding works will also get even higher, he said.

Tencent Video’s most important task will be to cooperate with creators, Sun said. The platform’s job is to identify the teams with real creative strength and a clear direction, then use its resources to help bring standout content to audiences as soon as possible, he noted.

The next Chinese video content that goes global is unlikely to be a tentpole project, but something that emerges from a small team, Sun said. Tencent Video aims to boost their chances of success and speed up the process, he added.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Martin Kadiev