Recently, Great Aim Film and Television announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Zhejiang Great Aim Investment Co., Ltd., plans to invest 100 million yuan to participate in the establishment of a fund enterprise and invest in a general artificial intelligence large model company. This is undoubtedly another major move in the AI track by Huace Film and Television after accessing Baidu's "Wenxin Yiyan", establishing the AIGC Application Research Institute, and self-developed large model "Youfeng". In April last year, Zhao Yifang, founder and chairman of Huace Film and Television Group, delivered a public speech, specifically mentioning the impact of AIGC on the film and television industry and the relevant deployment of its company. Today, the company is making steady progress, striving to maintain its advantages in content competitiveness, technology industry influence, industrialization system construction, investment and financing.

Author | Liu Shu (author of Sanchuanhui Cultural Science and Technology, researcher of Sanchuanhui Cultural Science and Technology Research Institute).

Editorial Review | Time

Edit | Peninsula

Source | Sanchuanhui Culture and Technology

For seizing the right to speak on the AI track, Huace Film and Television is bound to win.

On July 24, Great Aim Film and Television announced that its wholly-owned subsidiary, Zhejiang Great Aim Investment Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Great Aim Investment"), intends to invest 100 million yuan with its own funds to jointly establish Yancheng Zhihua Venture Capital Fund Partnership (Limited Partnership) (hereinafter referred to as "Yancheng Zhihua") with Hainan Zhiqiao Private Equity Fund Management Partnership (Limited Partnership).

After this investment, the scale of Yancheng Zhihua is RMB 100.01 million, and the company accounts for 99.99% as a limited partner. Yancheng Zhihua will directly or indirectly invest in the equity of Beijing Zhipu Huazhang Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Zhipu Huazhang").

As a general artificial intelligence large model company, Zhipu Huazhang has launched a large model MaaS open platform to create a new paradigm of efficient and generalized "model as a service" AI development, and independently developed a GLM series of models such as 100 billion base models, dialogue models, code models, Wensheng videos, and multimodal models, which is a "star" in the current field of science and technology.

This is undoubtedly another major move in the AI track by Huace Film and Television after accessing Baidu's "Wenxin Yiyan", establishing the AIGC Application Research Institute, and self-developed large model "Youfeng".

In April last year, Zhao Yifang, founder and chairman of Huace Film and Television Group, delivered a public speech, specifically mentioning the impact of AIGC on the film and television industry and the relevant deployment of its company. Today, the company is making steady progress, striving to maintain its advantages in content competitiveness, technology industry influence, industrialization system construction, investment and financing.

1. From cooperation to self-development, there are hidden obstacles in the good

Huace Film and Television is the first film and television company to deploy AI, and in just two years, it has experienced the path from cooperation to self-development, from learners to developers, locking in the technical advantages in the industry.

As early as 2021, Huace Film and Television put forward the strategic direction of "film and television + technology", comprehensively deployed the development path of "high-quality content development + innovative technology application", and upgraded the science and technology digital growth center to a first-level department in 2022 to accelerate the integration of film and technology and technology, implement the application of AI technology in the company's daily operations and project development, and make full use of AIGC technology to improve the efficiency of the entire pipeline of the film and television industry.

Then, in the field of exploring AI, in the initial stage, Huace Film and Television chose to cooperate with leading Internet companies, and in February 2023, it announced that it would fully access Baidu Wenxin Yiyan to jointly explore the application of AIGC technology to the whole link of film and television production such as content creation, content production, and content publicity. It is also the first film and television company to cooperate with Wenxin Yiyan.

In April of the same year, Great Aim Film and Television spent 80 million yuan to acquire Hangzhou Cebo and Shanghai Huajuhui to accelerate the technological content of content, explore the scene application of AIGC technology, build China's largest film and television material copyright operation platform, and expand the breakthrough points for overseas content marketing, AIGC content and copyright operation and development. In addition, Huace Film and Television has also reached a strategic cooperation with Mobile Migu, with content IP as the core, using digital technologies such as 5G, AI, and virtual production to build an industrial space of "new content + new consumption".

In June, Huace Film and Television gradually shifted its focus to the field of self-research, established the AIGC Application Research Institute, and set up a special fund of 500 million yuan to support the application and development of AIGC.

By September, the "Film and Television Script Intelligent Creation System" developed by AIGC Application Research Institute was launched within Huace Film and Television, which is based on the vertical model of self-developed scripts, provides tools of "evaluation assistant" and "screenwriter assistant", supports ultra-long Chinese, and can increase the evaluation content of novels and scripts from 3 days to 5 minutes in the past 200,000~500,000 words, which greatly improves the evaluation efficiency.

According to the 2023 annual financial report of Huace Film and Television, the company has significantly increased its investment in R&D, with 25.0932 million yuan increasing by 70.84% over the previous year, and the increase is mainly used for the introduction of AI talents, equipment procurement and project R&D.

Entering 2024, Huace Film and Television began to look for "technology upstarts" to cooperate, as well as increase independent research and development efforts, first accessing the popular Kimi model in March for script evaluation and assisting screenwriters, and at the same time trying to use AIGC in the whole process of film and television drama production.

In May, Huace Film and Television launched the large model "Youfeng", becoming the first film and television company in the A-share market to have a self-developed large model that has passed the national "generative artificial intelligence service filing".

According to the official introduction, the AI model can achieve the use effect of "completing the preliminary screening evaluation of an IP work in 3 minutes, and completing the accurate evaluation of the content of a million-word work in 30 minutes". At present, Huace Film and Television has used AI to assist creative development, content evaluation, post-production and other links in the fields of TV dramas, movies, and short dramas, and is expected to launch two AI-created micro-short dramas from September to October.

Now, based on the application of "wind", Huace Film and Television's investment in Zhipu Huazhang is undoubtedly to expand its advantages in the field of AI self-developed technology, upgrade from text to video, and lay the position of the chief technology of film and television companies, so as to take this as the cornerstone and stay in the top 1 of the industry for a long time.

However, although there are many actions of Huace Film and Television, there is no clear landing case so far, and there are some potential problems:

The first is to compare the AI industry horizontally, and the self-developed technology is no longer an advantage. Compared with the deployment of entertainment companies, Huace Film and Television is really in the forefront, but compared with the deep-rooted Internet or technology companies, it does not have any upper hand, which is also the essential reason for the company's acquisition of the "technology upstart" Zhipu Huazhang - betting on the "miHoYo (the production company of the game "Genshin Impact)" in the technology circle and gaining a place in the technology circle. Otherwise, it will not be able to achieve technical output, which will deeply affect the industry or strengthen its own moat.

The second is that the input-output return ratio is high. AI technology requires a lot of financial, manpower, and time costs, but the return stability is not high, from R&D, testing, and application, each round has cycle risks, and is also affected by uncontrollable factors such as technology iteration and competing products. In this way, even if AI technology can save costs in the application process, it may lose money compared with the upfront investment.

The third is that the actual production of film and television content is almost meaningless. At present, AI technology is still more concept than application, and even cutting-edge AI models still have problems such as limited training data, limited functions, deviation in fineness, and difficulty in unifying scenes and characters. In particular, the originality needs to be improved, and at present, it is more about resource integration and imitation.

The fourth is the core logical conflict of industry attributes. Film and television creation belongs to the field of art and culture, with people's emotions as the source; AI technology, on the other hand, is a hard technology, based on character encoding, and there is a conflict between organic and inorganic substances in essence, which is very difficult to integrate.

Of course, most of the above problems are common problems in the industry, and anyone who does + AI in the film and television field will encounter them, but a series of operations of Great Aim require the support of a strong cross-border talent team. Overall, looking at all the good things, there are potential obstacles to practical implementation.

Second, technology determines productivity, and derivative value is not limited to content

As a trend in the past two years, it is not uncommon for AI to be applied to film and television, and there have been premieres of "the world's first AI feature film" "Our T2 Remake" abroad, and "Legend" in China has used AI to "change face" for Jackie Chan, and even in a sense, AI has been a symbol of industrialization and technology, which is the key to reducing costs and increasing efficiency in the long run.

As a leading film and television company, if it wants to be at the top of the echelon tower for a long time, it must have key technical capabilities, that is, it has leading productivity, which can radiate the entire industry and deeply promote the development of the film and television industry. Although the accuracy of AI needs to be improved, the future is clear.

In terms of the current trend of AI applications, downstream exploration is more effective than upstream. Taking the actions of Huace Film and Television as an example, after the company connected to Wenxin Yiyan, it deployed the whole link of the industry. Among them, downstream content promotion is a relatively mature link for AI embedding and application. Based on multi-dimensional data such as platform users, AI can quickly capture the preferences of vertical users and make more accurate market predictions in real time. For example, the AI box office prediction of Lighthouse Professional Edition, iQIYI's full-end generative AI video highlights, etc.; Another example is promotional materials such as posters and trailers.

The production process, which is located at the front end of the publicity and distribution, is the main battlefield for AI to play now and in the future. In this regard, in view of the different degrees of system development, foreign technology stratification is more mature than domestic and can correspond to different types of work. For example, the original artist, art visual effects related to the Wensheng picture side, such as Midjourney, etc.; On the Wensheng audio side related to sound effects and BGM, there are Suno, etc.; Wensheng Video has Sora, Pika, Runway, etc., to assist in post-production imaging and other tasks.

As a result, in the same way of "advancing by district", Huace Film and Television has separately deployed AI technologies such as pictures, audio and video, which can promote the construction of the domestic film and television industrialization system to a certain extent, and is relatively strategic and disciplined, without the intervention of many human relations. This is the foundation of the real development of the industry.

The upstream creative end is the key text stage, that is, the link where people's subjective emotions and emotions play the greatest role, and AI will be a complete helper and service provider to help creators complete basic and fragmented work, which forces creators to play more creatively and learn to give instructions to AI. Great Aim's investment in Wensheng can allow more creators to give full play to their value and enrich their story production capacity, but it will also make creators more "volume".

In terms of the in-depth growth of the industry, Huace Film and Television's measures in AI will also produce a series of chain reactions. First of all, in the direction of talent training, basic jobs are facing downsizing, and AI talents may be in short supply. The same thing is already happening in Hollywood. The cultivation of AI talents is a new problem, which will break the original film and television training structure, and the original artistic talents need to become "art + technology" compound talents, and the training methods and resources also need trial and error and accumulation. A similar problem will also be reflected in front of the stage, when actors can use AI to change their faces at will, then most actors may face unemployment.

Then there is the age-old issue of copyright. AI training requires a huge database, and the original materials of the database are all obtained by creators, and how creators will not be robbed of their interests by AI while ensuring their rights and interests is one of the problems that the industry needs to think about in the future. In this way, the core of the sustainable development of AI is still the creator, hard technology is always just a means, and AI cannot replace the creator. In the same way, there will also be material disputes between film and television companies, which will prompt laws and regulations to continue to upgrade for AI creation.

The third is the pan-cultural and entertainment industry pattern. AI will promote the establishment of virtual experience spaces, which will generate new business models for cross-border cooperation such as "film and television + cultural tourism", "film and television + games", and "film and television + consumption". The specific form depends on the design and planning, but it is predictable that the proportion of interactive interest will be very large.

In addition, it must be said that at the capital level, the development of AI will also be good for the company. For example, in March of this year, as the Kimi concept stocks on the dark side of the moon skyrocketed, related AI stocks also rose, and Huace Film and Television, which had actions in AI in the current period, also had a daily limit.

Of course, Huace Film and Television is working hard, and other companies are also working hard. According to public information, various companies such as Alibaba Pictures, Wanda Films, Shanghai Film Group, China Literature Group, iQiyi, Youku, Tencent Video, Mango TV, Bona, and Guangguang are all carrying out AI-related businesses, which means that Huace Film and Television needs to continue to work hard if they want to use AI to consolidate their industry advantages.

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