AI’s Impact on the Film Industry

AI is driving a significant iteration of productivity and innovation in the film industry, fundamentally reconstructing content production logic. In the future, content will be vastly enriched, but only high-quality IPs that combine ideological depth and artistic standards will endure through industry cycles.

Currently, AI technology is rapidly developing and deeply integrating into the entire film industry chain. From content creation to marketing operations, and from production models to industry ecosystems, unprecedented reconstructions are underway. The most intuitive change brought by AI is addressing the long-standing pain points of the film industry. High production costs and lengthy production cycles are among the most prominent factors hindering the industry’s development. Traditional film production models have high barriers, causing many quality ideas to be buried and talented individuals to struggle to stand out. With the launch of large video generation models like Seedance 2.0, AI film production has shifted from “single-point technological breakthroughs” to “multi-point blooming across the entire chain,” pushing film production into a new development phase. We predict that in the future, successful commercial blockbusters can be produced in just 3 to 6 months using AI technology.

Technological innovation will lead to significant changes in both quantity and quality in the film industry, which we refer to as the “1-1-2 Law”: a unit’s content production cost will decrease by an order of magnitude, the number of creators will increase by an order of magnitude, and the number of works will experience an explosive growth of two orders of magnitude. This represents a comprehensive reconstruction of content production logic—when AI can efficiently handle tedious tasks such as script evaluation, scene design, and post-editing, production costs will dramatically decrease, creative tools will become accessible, and the vitality of a vast number of creators will be fully unleashed, enriching content supply and attracting more audience attention. Under this “flywheel effect,” the landscape of the film industry will change, creating explosive new job opportunities and providing the public with more rich and exciting film works. This aligns with the “14th Five-Year Plan” advocating for the “prosperity of new popular literature and art under the internet conditions.”

The deeper transformation brought by AI to the film industry is the shift of film media platforms from centralized to decentralized models, reconstructing the industry ecosystem. Over the past decade, long video platforms have primarily operated under centralized models, focusing on content procurement and production. With the widespread adoption of AI, content production will break the “monopoly of a few” and shift towards “mass co-creation,” ultimately transforming platforms into decentralized public service providers. This is the inevitable path to align with technological trends and achieve open and win-win industry outcomes.

The transition to decentralization will accelerate the construction of new content ecosystems on film platforms, fostering new creator and user communities. This will bring about four changes: first, creators will have more content brands and copyrights, ensuring their rights are fully protected; second, creators will have more private traffic, establishing more direct trust relationships with audiences, enhancing their influence; third, interactions between creators and audiences will be more direct, with comments and feedback reaching creators immediately; fourth, the income model for creators will gradually shift from being dominated by platforms to being determined by consumer decisions, aligning with market and user needs. This transformation will also change the cooperative relationships on the content production and supply sides. Collaborations between platforms and production companies will gradually shift towards revenue-sharing models, which is an inevitable development direction in the era of massive film content. The proportion of self-produced content by platforms will decrease, but this does not mean reduced investment; rather, it will focus more on high-quality content creation.

To adapt to these changes, film platforms need to strengthen their public service attributes, building a full-chain support system for creators and creating a comprehensive service system covering content production, operation, distribution, and monetization. In the content production phase, they should launch professional production agents and AIGC (Artificial Intelligence Generated Content) creator operation platforms to lower creative barriers. In the operational phase, they should provide IP licensing, script evaluation, and other middle-platform services to help quality ideas materialize. Additionally, platforms should balance “hard services” for viewing and “soft services” for promotion, helping quality content reach a broader audience, ensuring reasonable returns for creators, and stimulating creative motivation.

Currently, AI has been widely applied in various segments of the film industry, including online stories, dramas, short series, and animations. Important content categories such as theatrical films, series, and variety shows, which require high levels of creative depth and emotional expression, will be the last stronghold for AI to conquer. It is essential to emphasize that regardless of how technology develops, IP remains the most valuable asset in the industry, and creativity and art are the soul of creation—elements that AI cannot replace. In the future, content will be vastly enriched, but only high-quality IPs that combine ideological depth and artistic standards will endure through industry cycles. In February of this year, the first iQIYI Park officially opened in Yangzhou, Jiangsu, integrating film and television IPs like “The Tang Dynasty Mysteries” and “Lotus House” with cutting-edge technologies such as AI and XR (Extended Reality), bringing IPs out of screens and into life, providing consumers with immersive cultural tourism experiences. This is also our exploration of creating cross-media IPs and linking film and cultural tourism.

As a leading video platform, we firmly practice the development philosophy of “empowering culture through technology” and seize the era’s opportunities presented by AI technological innovation, focusing on the critical track of AI film creation, striving to build a decentralized social media platform that elevates creation, unleashes creativity, and supports the prosperous development of new popular literature and art.