Select Language:
On November 12, a leading Chinese streaming platform hosted its inaugural Artificial Intelligence Short Film Creation Competition awards ceremony, honoring the best entries with a total of 11 awards. The contest drew over 2,300 submissions from more than 30 countries, with winners announced during the event held on November 10. The awards included one first-place prize, three second-place prizes, five third-place awards, and special distinctions for the most creative and best narration.
The competition officially opened for entries on July 15. Participants were required to submit short films ranging from one to five minutes, primarily created using two advanced AI tools: ByteDance’s Doubao video generation model Seedance 1.0 Pro and Google’s Veo 3.
The top prize went to a short film titled Under the Fireworks Lies My Home by seasoned filmmaker Chen Youxue, who has over a decade of experience in traditional filmmaking. Chen mentioned during the ceremony that he completed the project in just 10 days.
“AI enables the realization of ideas that were previously impossible to film,” Chen explained. “It transforms concepts that could be written but were challenging to shoot into tangible reality.”
Two of the three second-place winners were A Tree’s Fantasy by Wen Ye and Alaya by Pan Yu. Pan emphasized that human-AI collaborations are becoming a standard, as AI helps overcome limitations of human overthinking and pushes creative boundaries. He noted that while AI’s ability to transcend is inspiring, coexistence remains the core principle.
Li Dan, representing the team behind one of the third-place winning AI short films, White Steed, stressed that despite AI’s growing power, humans remain the driving force behind its development. “Human emotion is still the most valuable element,” he said.
The competition garnered significant interest not only among professionals from animation, film, and publishing sectors but also from individual creators and fans. “These AI short films show that a professional background is no longer a barrier to creation in the AI era,” said Wen, a full-time designer.
Several gaming and comic production studios also participated, with one Hangzhou-based animation company expressing interest in exploring AI-driven content further to reduce costs. They mentioned their goal of assessing AI’s potential in drama production.
Google Cloud’s AI technical specialist Jennie Shi expressed her admiration after viewing the submissions. She commented, “If anyone claims that AI-generated works lack soul, they are biased against AI,” and encouraged creators to start experimenting without waiting for AI to be perfect.
The platform has been investing in AI technology since 2018, with Vice President Xie Danming revealing the development of internal tools that incorporate large language models into their content production workflows.
Senior Vice President Chen Xiao highlighted AI’s role as an opportunity rather than a threat, emphasizing that AI will not diminish the platform’s strength in long-form video content. Instead, it aims to enhance content creation efficiency and creativity.
Xie added that this contest was just the beginning, as the platform introduced an AI Theater section on its website to bring AI-produced dramas from experimental labs to mainstream audiences. The focus will be on films longer than 15 minutes, a particularly challenging genre in traditional film and television production, explained Zhu Liang, VP and head of the platform’s Intelligent Production Department.
“Action matters more than standing still,” Zhu stated. “AI is not only upgrading film technology but also reshaping production processes, aesthetic standards, and organizational structures to create a new audiovisual language.”
AI Theater is envisioned as a dedicated channel to foster new viewing habits. The platform is expanding AI applications across various content formats, including animation, comics, dramas, and movies, with children’s programming expected to play a key role in future breakthroughs, according to Li Zhen, head of the company’s Dali Studio.
Chen Youxue expressed optimism about China’s position in AI creation, hoping to see more innovative AI trends emerging on the platform to inspire the next generation of creators.
ChatGPT
Perplexity
Gemini AI
Grok AI
