In the era of AI, excellent creativity and excellent aesthetics are the "core assets"

"How can humans and AI coexist, and will generative AI technology collectively unwork in the creative industry?"

This is probably one of the most important issues in the video industry at the moment, and even worries every practitioner. The 2024 iQIYI World Conference held on April 23 tried to come up with a link to respond to the thinking of the industry. At the main forum of the conference, Liu Wenfeng, chief technology officer of iQIYI, brought his thoughts on the relationship between generative AI and creation in his speech on the theme of "Embracing AI and Creating the Future Together", as well as iQIYI's latest exploration in generative AI.

He believes that AIGC should not be misinterpreted as a content product that competes with PPC, PUGC, AND UGC, but that creators of all kinds of content can use the learning and generative capabilities of generative AI to create higher-quality content. Driven by generative AI, the future content industry will be more "popular" in terms of creative limits, the personalized connection between content and creators and audiences will be closer, and the industry trial and error cycle will be greatly shortened and iterations will be further accelerated. Liu Wenfeng believes that in the era of AI, the value of excellent creativity and excellent aesthetics will become more prominent, and AI will enable every creator to have a new quality of productivity.

"In the face of generative AI, don't panic!" Liu Wenfeng said frankly, the rapid development of AI has caused anxiety around the world, and even caused the American Writers Guild to launch a general strike, and Hollywood screenwriters have also stopped for nearly half a year. Even the programmer community is beginning to be afraid of AI's programming capabilities.

However, some industry insiders who have already partnered with AI take the opposite view. "I feel more powerful when I use AI, I feel like I have new tools to help me with my code, and it's easier to write across languages." Douglas Engelbart, the computer scientist who invented the mouse, argues that computers should be used to improve human intelligence and capabilities. AI is a powerful tool that can greatly improve human capabilities.

In this regard, Liu Wenfeng also agreed. He mentioned that in the early stage of the project, in order to describe the core concept and temperament of the project through the picture, the producer needed to hire a professional art team to draw the concept poster, which was time-consuming and labor-intensive, but now, the producer can use AI to easily generate the concept poster he wants, and constantly adjust the mood and expression he wants. Become the "most mandatory filmmaker" who can draw concept posters.

For iQIYI, generative AI is actually a big opportunity. As long as the characteristics of AI-generated content are used, generative AI can become a new lever for creators to amplify their creative ability and creative value, so that every creator can benefit, so as to create more valuable works, which is the so-called "new quality productivity".

From a technical perspective, generative AI has two major capabilities that can be empowered to creators – the ability to learn and the ability to generate. Learning ability refers to the ability of creators using generative AI to acquire knowledge faster, more broadly, and more deeply than before, while generative ability means that creators can use AI to produce content more efficiently.

Liu Wenfeng also mentioned that in the film and television content industry, the amount of content is not the key, especially in the context of more and more AI-generated content. Excellent creativity and excellent aesthetics are the necessary qualities of excellent creators. He believes that making good use of AI tools will make individuals or small teams more capable, and the limits of creativity may be further broken through, and "more explosive explosions" will appear. If the number of content produced is more and more, and the average level is getting higher and higher, it means that the number of short videos is exploding, which makes the personalized distribution or the connection between consumers and producers closer and closer, and the development direction of long videos will definitely appear in circles and personalization. Correspondingly, the speed of user aesthetics and industrial iteration will be accelerated, and there will be more and more good works in the entire market.

In the field of film and television industrialization, iQIYI has been promoting the research and development of intelligent production systems, and has applied technologies including cloud computing, big data, AI, and Unreal Engine to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of content project production. For example, the IQ Stage virtual shooting system independently developed by iQIYI has carried out the filming of multiple drama projects. The just-completed "Dream Returns" has broken through many technical difficulties in virtual shooting, such as the time-lapse matching of virtual scene light and real scene light, rain and snow scene special effects matching, large-area water surface reflection shooting, and WIA high-speed shooting and other applications in virtual scenes. "Big Dream Returns" is also the drama project with the largest amount of virtual shooting and the most scenes in the industry.

An important foundation and accumulation of virtual shooting technology is the digital asset library. iQIYI has built its own digital asset library, so that digital assets such as costumes, characters, virtual props and scene buildings of content projects can be retained in the library and the copyright can be confirmed, and future projects can be re-authorized for application. In the future, iQIYI will train generative AI on the basis of the digital asset library and produce more digital assets for future project applications.

With the blessing of AI technology, iQIYI actively implements generative AI in all aspects of creation. For example, in the planning stage, generative AI is used to improve the reading efficiency, creative efficiency and creativity level of scripts and novels for relevant teams. In addition, you can use this tool to directly extract information such as world views, story outlines, character introductions, and character diagrams. Higher reading efficiency makes it more likely to evaluate and mine more good IPs. Even at the beginning of script planning, creators can predict which parts of the current script will make users lose patience, so they can make targeted adjustments to make the story more engaging.

In the production and distribution stage, generative AI provides strong support for virtual production, sound production, and asset production, as well as the generation of advertising materials and copywriting. iQIYI has established a knowledge base of film and television literature, making it easier for projects with different themes to acquire knowledge, examine details, and inspire inspiration in the creative process. In addition to text-related parts, generative AI can also be used for the conceptual design of imagery, including concept posters.

iQIYI believes that the core value of the film and television industry lies in everyone involved. In the era of AI, every creator can have useful tools to help creators in the film and television industry evolve into a stronger version of themselves through intelligent production, and bring more wonderful content to the audience with their excellent creativity and excellent aesthetics.