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Minxiao Chang

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.
The Moli OPC AI Comic Drama Base, located in the northeastern part of the city, brings together directors, producers and distributors under one roof to capitalise on an emerging content genre: using AI to turn a short comic book or video into a microdrama.
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.
Producers in China said ByteDance’s Seedance 2.0 video generation model had become one of their preferred tools due to its high efficiency and low cost, even as the technology faces backlash from the US film industry amid intellectual property disputes.
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.
Some models from foreign developers, by contrast, often require multiple tools to achieve similar results, she said.


Bai Jianyue, a producer at an AI comic drama distribution platform based in Shenzhen, said Seedance 2.0 had delivered better consistency across the video production than other AI video tools.
“Other video generation models typically generate clips of around eight to 15 seconds, requiring creators to stitch multiple segments together and increasing the chance of having inconsistencies in characters, camera movements and backgrounds,” Bai said.
“Unlike many other rival tools that require creators to generate dialogue, music and sound effects separately, Seedance can produce those elements alongside video, reducing post-production workload,” Bai added.
ByteDance has been strengthening its leadership in AI video generation. Months after the launch of Seedance 2.0, it announced the more powerful Seedance 2.5 model in late June.
The newer version would double the maximum length of videos to 30 seconds, and allow for native 4K resolution and the input of up to 50 multimedia elements, “significantly enhancing the controllability of complex creative tasks”, according to a June announcement by ByteDance’s cloud unit Volcano Engine. Seedance 2.5 has yet to be widely released.
“Models that generate longer clips, integrate audio and fit seamlessly into production pipelines are becoming more valuable than marginal improvements in visual quality,” said Robin Luo, founder of Xingke Pictures, a Shenzhen-based AI content production company.
He said competition in the AI video sector was increasingly shifting from benchmark performance towards production efficiency and ecosystem integration.
Luo said AI was already reshaping the economics of content production, particularly in short-form entertainment. While the technology was unlikely to replace high-end filmmaking, it could significantly transform lower-cost, high-volume content production by allowing smaller teams to create videos that previously would require much larger crews, he said.


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China’s studios are using ByteDance’s model to cut production times from months to weeks and drive down video creation costs


China’s studios are using ByteDance’s model to cut production times from months to weeks and drive down video creation costs.


How ByteDance’s Seedance model empowers China’s nascent AI drama industry

.css-1c6uqr6{color:inherit;font-weight:inherit;font-size:inherit;font-family:inherit;line-height:inherit;overflow-wrap:break-word;}China’s studios are using ByteDance’s model to cut production times from months to weeks and drive down video creation costs

China’s studios are using ByteDance’s model to cut production times from months to weeks and drive down video creation costs