Latest news with #TangJiayu
Yahoo
20-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
China's Sora-like Vidu breaks into Hollywood with deal to produce GenAI anime series
A Chinese text-to-video generation start-up said it has signed a deal with a US animation studio to produce an artificial intelligence (AI) generated anime series, in the latest example of Hollywood moving to embrace this fast-developing technology. Vidu, a Sora-like AI model developed by Chinese AI firm ShengShu Technology and Tsinghua University, has formed a "strategic partnership" with Aura Productions, an American studio founded by Chinese-American actress Luo Yan and creative director D.T. Carpenter, according to a statement from ShengShu. The partners will launch a 50-episode short science-fiction anime series on "mainstream global social media platforms" in 2025. The first trailer for this series will be released globally in the coming days, it said. Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team. ShengShu co-founder Tang Jiayu unveils the Vidu video tool. Photo: Ben Jiang alt=ShengShu co-founder Tang Jiayu unveils the Vidu video tool. Photo: Ben Jiang> The deal comes as Chinese video-generation models are gaining attention for their capabilities, opening opportunities for downstream applications. Vidu 2.0, unveiled in January, claims the ability to generate high-quality videos in just 10 seconds. The production deal will leverage Vidu's "multi-subject consistency" feature to "blend Asian anime elements with Hollywood creativity" to create works that "resonate with young North American audiences", according to the statement. Vidu was used to generate a Chinese trailer for the 2024 film Venom: The Last Dance. Separately, last September Baidu's large model platform Qianfan integrated Vidu into its platform. ShengShu also teamed up with the China unit of US AI chipmaker AMD to help in "accelerating the launch of AI personal computer applications", according to a press release issued in March 2024. The partnership with Aura Productions is the first project since ShengShu Technology poached Luo Yihang from ByteDance, the owner of TikTok. Luo, the former head of AI solutions at ByteDance's cloud unit Volcano Engine, joined the start-up as chief executive to oversee research and development, product management, commercialisation and team management. Luo and Aura founder Luo Yan are not related. Luo Yihang said on Monday that he expected the new collaboration to "further push the boundaries of anime production". Video generation is seen as an important application of generative AI (GenAI) technologies. Video generation is seen as an important application of generative AI technologies. Around 204,000 jobs in the entertainment industry - including film, video gaming and music - are poised to "undergo significant disruption" between 2024 and 2026 due to the implementation of GenAI, according to a report by Los Angeles, California-based consultancy CVL Economics. This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2025 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Copyright (c) 2025. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
Yahoo
18-03-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
China's Sora-like Vidu breaks into Hollywood with deal to produce GenAI anime series
A Chinese text-to-video generation start-up said it has signed a deal with a US animation studio to produce an artificial intelligence (AI) generated anime series, in the latest example of Hollywood moving to embrace this fast-developing technology. Vidu, a Sora-like AI model developed by Chinese AI firm ShengShu Technology and Tsinghua University, has formed a "strategic partnership" with Aura Productions, an American studio founded by Chinese-American actress Luo Yan and creative director D.T. Carpenter, according to a statement from ShengShu. The partners will launch a 50-episode short science-fiction anime series on "mainstream global social media platforms" in 2025. The first trailer for this series will be released globally in the coming days, it said. Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team. ShengShu co-founder Tang Jiayu unveils the Vidu video tool. Photo: Ben Jiang alt=ShengShu co-founder Tang Jiayu unveils the Vidu video tool. Photo: Ben Jiang> The deal comes as Chinese video-generation models are gaining attention for their capabilities, opening opportunities for downstream applications. Vidu 2.0, unveiled in January, claims the ability to generate high-quality videos in just 10 seconds. The production deal will leverage Vidu's "multi-subject consistency" feature to "blend Asian anime elements with Hollywood creativity" to create works that "resonate with young North American audiences", according to the statement. Vidu was used to generate a Chinese trailer for the 2024 film Venom: The Last Dance. Separately, last September Baidu's large model platform Qianfan integrated Vidu into its platform. ShengShu also teamed up with the China unit of US AI chipmaker AMD to help in "accelerating the launch of AI personal computer applications", according to a press release issued in March 2024. The partnership with Aura Productions is the first project since ShengShu Technology poached Luo Yihang from ByteDance, the owner of TikTok. Luo, the former head of AI solutions at ByteDance's cloud unit Volcano Engine, joined the start-up as chief executive to oversee research and development, product management, commercialisation and team management. Luo and Aura founder Luo Yan are not related. Luo Yihang said on Monday that he expected the new collaboration to "further push the boundaries of anime production". Video generation is seen as an important application of generative AI (GenAI) technologies. Video generation is seen as an important application of generative AI technologies. Around 204,000 jobs in the entertainment industry - including film, video gaming and music - are poised to "undergo significant disruption" between 2024 and 2026 due to the implementation of GenAI, according to a report by Los Angeles, California-based consultancy CVL Economics. This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2025 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Copyright (c) 2025. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved.
Yahoo
13-03-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Former ByteDance executive takes helm at Baidu-backed Shengshu amid generative AI boom
A former ByteDance executive has joined Shengshu AI as CEO, marking a significant hire by one of China's leading artificial intelligence (AI) video start-ups amid fierce competition for talent in the rapidly evolving industry. Luo Yihang - the former head of AI solutions at ByteDance's cloud unit, Volcano Engine - will oversee research and development, product management, commercialisation and team management at Shengshu, according to a company representative. Tang Jiayu, Shengshu's co-founder and former chief executive, would assume the role of president, responsible for core functional areas including strategic development, branding, human resources, administration, finance, legal affairs and intellectual property, the representative said on Wednesday. Do you have questions about the biggest topics and trends from around the world? Get the answers with SCMP Knowledge, our new platform of curated content with explainers, FAQs, analyses and infographics brought to you by our award-winning team. Founded in early 2023 amid the surge of interest in generative AI following OpenAI's release of ChatGPT, Shengshu gained prominence in China last year with the launch of Vidu, a video-generation model seen as a competitor to OpenAI's Sora. Shengshu AI co-founder and president Tang Jiayu introduces the company's new video tool. Photo: Ben Jiang alt=Shengshu AI co-founder and president Tang Jiayu introduces the company's new video tool. Photo: Ben Jiang> Beijing-based Shengshu has strong ties to Tsinghua University, from which members of its core team graduated. They include president Tang, chief scientist and computer science professor Zhu Jun, and chief technology officer Bao Fan. The company has received investments from search giant Baidu and Ant Group, the fintech affiliate of Alibaba Group Holding, which owns the Post. Luo, also a Tsinghua alumnus who earned his doctorate from the university's automation department in 2014, began his career as marketing director at Yunshan Networks, a strategic partner of Microsoft in China. His last public appearance representing ByteDance was in June, during an online webinar discussing how AI-generated content could drive marketing growth. He viewed AI as a collaborative partner rather than a replacement for human employees, adding that the technology "has the potential to gradually transform into digital employees". ByteDance's Volcano Engine provides corporate and developer clients with access to proprietary large language models, the type of technology underpinning generative AI services like ChatGPT. Its products include the Doubao foundation model and video generator Seaweed. Luo has also served as vice-president of a Beijing pilot zone for AI innovation and application, and as a lecturer on AI at the Cheung Kong Graduate School of Business, according to a speaker introduction during the event. He is not the only ByteDance executive who has transitioned to generative AI start-ups. Zhang Tao, who oversaw the strategic planning and launch of ByteDance's overseas products, now serves as product partner at Butterfly Effect, the Tencent Holdings-backed company that recently garnered attention with a preview of its general-purpose AI agent, Manus. Ren Lifeng, a founding member of TikTok's Chinese sibling Douyin, last year established Shumei Wanwu, an e-commerce community powered by generative AI. The start-up has secured funding from HongShan Capital Group, IDG Capital and Meituan. This article originally appeared in the South China Morning Post (SCMP), the most authoritative voice reporting on China and Asia for more than a century. For more SCMP stories, please explore the SCMP app or visit the SCMP's Facebook and Twitter pages. Copyright © 2025 South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Copyright (c) 2025. South China Morning Post Publishers Ltd. All rights reserved. Sign in to access your portfolio
