ChinAI #374: China’s first AI-generated longform TV series

Greetings from a world where…

this could be the Hawkeyes year

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Feature Translation: China’s first AI-generated longform TV series

Context: Published in the 16th century, Journey to the West is a classic Chinese novel that tells the tale of Sun Wukong, a mythological monkey that helps a Buddhist monk journey to India. Among the many published sequels to Journey to the West, one of the three main ones, written by an unknown author, is The Later Journey to the West [后西游记]. In this sequel, the story shifts to Sun Xiaosheng, a young stone monkey who grows up on the same mountain long after Sun Wukong departed on his journey.

On August 31, Mango Excellent Media’s TV adaptation of this novel premiered during prime time. “It’s the first-ever fully AI-generated entertainment to hit mainstream provincial satellite prime time,” writes Mandy Wong. After seeing Bytedance Seedance 2.0’s (AI text-to-video model) release earlier this year, the team behind Journey to the West felt there was an opportunity to make a long-form series and break through a market “saturated with uninspired short-form dramas.” In this week’s feature translation (link to Huxiu article), Shuhan Liu reports on the makings of this AI-generated TV series.

Key Takeaways: From initial planning in March of this year to the premiere on August 31, the project took just six months (traditional TV dramas take 1-2 years). ByteDance’s Seeedance 2.0 and 2.5 models generated all the visuals, without live-action actors and filmed footage. How did this work?

• The director, Li Dongshen, and a ~100-person production crew developed a workflow based on “co-creation” with AI. This crew included 15 artists tasked with developing the style and concept art for key characters.
• They dealt with many pitfalls. At one point, the first two episodes needed to be completely remade, but Li claimed that generative AI made the costs more manageable. A single episode’s budget was ~900,000 RMB, with compute accounting for about 1/4 of the costs. They did have to allocate compute budgets for specific scenes and limit the number of generation attempts.
• One issue stood out to me: for scenes of the adult monkey version of Sun Xiaosheng, its expressions and movements were much more wooden compared to its young stone monkey phase. Ultimately, they discovered that the character design sheet for the adult monkey had omitted a portion of the tail. That missing segment “caused the AI ​​agent, Seedance, to form a completely different fundamental understanding of the character.” Liu continues, “One version was perceived as a human playing a monkey, wearing prosthetics that immobilized many facial muscles, while the version with the tail was perceived as an actual monkey, resulting in entirely different logic regarding behavior and expressions.”

• The media company Mango also invested in vertical models that addressed TV production needs, including lip-syncing and image quality optimization.

What does The Later Journey to the West mean for the future of China’s TV and film production ecosystem?

• One reference point is the proliferation of AI-generated shortform content. For context, see Wency Chen’s SCMP article: “According to the China Netcasting Services Association, 367,000 microdramas were released across Chinese platforms in the first half of this year. More than 74 per cent were AI-generated – an average of more than 1,500 new AI dramas a day.”
• Yet, Liu reports on technical hurdles that still hinder longform productions like The Later Journey to the West: “Subtle facial expressions lack nuance, complex movements are prone to errors, and there is still room to improve consistency across long-duration sequences.”
• In terms of commercial viability, the director and the Mango team frame this project as a demonstration of feasibility, as opposed to profitability.

If the WeChat comments on the article are any indicator, the audience did not like the “AI feel.” Here are a few of the top comments:

• “Where is the Eastern aesthetic? It’s all Western-style 3D modeling.” (Note: the Huxiu article claimed that some viewers were captivated by the AI-generated Eastern aesthetic)
• “If you guys love to watch, then you watch. As for me, I won’t watch.”
• “Not as good as Niu Lai (a Chinese firm that went viral for its low-quality animation), the more it’s AI-enhanced, the more it loses ‘human touch.’”

FULL TRANSLATION: How an AI-generated longform TV series costing 900,000 RMB per episode drove a 13.3-billion RMB surge in Mango’s market value in five days

ChinAI Links (Four to Forward)

Must-read: Why We Like Things - what Silicon Valley gets wrong about taste

In Asterisk, Celine Nguyen meditates on taste, which some see as “what’s left” for humans to do in an AI economy.

Should-read: Those who Disappeared after the Mudslide at the Gyirong Border Crossing (in Chinese)

The Aquarian interviews people affected by the flash floods and mudslides, as they try to track down missing family members. H/t to Maya Wang for sharing. Interestingly, as she notes, this investigative piece is posted outside of China’s info ecosystem on Substack.

Should-read: Good thread on Anthropic’s recent threat intelligence report

David Agranovich, former director of threat disruption at Meta, shared some insightful takeaways. It’s worth underscoring hispoint that the report is overly geared toward’s the attackers view; don’t forget that the defender can also take advantage of this technology.

Should-read: A China Hawk’s Case for Studying in China

It’s sad that we’ve gotten to the point where people have to make the case for study-abroad as a way to better understand a country, but here we are….These are two good threads.

Thank you for reading and engaging.

These are Jeff Ding’s (sometimes) weekly translations of Chinese-language musings on AI and related topics. Jeff is an Assistant Professor of Political Science at George Washington University.

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