How ByteDance’s Seedance model empowers China’s nascent AI drama industry
China’s studios are using ByteDance’s model to cut production times from months to weeks and drive down video creation costs
At a video production base in Shenzhen, creators are generating so-called comic dramas using artificial intelligence, compressing months of production down to a matter of weeks.
China’s AI short-drama market was projected by market intelligence firm DataEye to hit 40 billion yuan (US$5.9 billion) in value this year after generating more than 22 billion yuan in profit in just five months. The number of viewers of short-drama videos also surged past 600 million in the first half of the year.
Zhou Xiangxiang, the founder of the Shenzhen-based community, said its content had reached global audiences from Southeast Asia to Latin America.
AI helps to reduce not only production time but also production costs. According to Zhou, the computing cost of producing an 80-minute comic drama could be reduced to as low as 25,000 yuan (US$3,694.2). Traditional animation production for a similar-length project could cost at least 160,000 yuan, according to a February report by Guosen Securities.
Zhou, who also runs a production studio, said her team uses Seedance more frequently than other AI tools because it is easier to learn, allowing production teams to standardise training for a growing pool of AI content creators.