Filmmakers are focused on adapting to AI’s influence rather than questioning its role in cinema.
AS China cements its place as the world’s second-largest film market, bolstered by global hits like “Ne Zha 2”, a new force is rapidly altering the creative and industrial landscape: artificial intelligence (AI).
AI dominated the conversation at this year’s Beijing International Film Festival. For filmmakers, the question is no longer whether AI will reshape Chinese cinema, but how to keep up with it. Forums and project showcases revealed an industry scrambling to adapt — embracing AI’s possibilities while confronting its challenges.
One of the festival’s key early discussions on AI came in a forum titled “AI Film and Television Creation: Opportunity or Trap?” Screenwriter Liu Yi, best known for co-writing the “Wolf Warrior” blockbuster series, described AI as a “ping-pong partner” of creativity, using tools like DeepSeek and Doubao to generate posters, character designs and script prompts. Yet, he cautioned, “The real torment of creation — the inception of core ideas — still rests on human shoulders.” AI, he argued, boosts efficiency but still falls short of revolutionizing the creative process.
Director Yu Baimei, co-director of 2020 comedy “My People, My Homeland”, experimented with video generator Kling for a short film last year. He likened AI to a “superhuman library” which excels in research but requires human curation. Yet he predicted that within years, AI could evolve beyond being a mere tool to automating higher-level creative decisions — a prospect both thrilling and unnerving.
This tension between opportunity and disruption resurfaced at the festival’s Technology Forum. “AI lacks consciousness but brims with creative potential,” said Huang Tiejun, a professor at the School of Computer Science at Peking University, emphasizing AI’s role as a collaborative partner rather than a replacement for human creators. — Xinhua
#The Global News Light of Myanmar