Famed Chinese director Jia Zhangke has released a short film made entirely with Chinese AI Seedance 2.0.
Seedance 2.0 is a newly released Chinese AI video creator from Bytedance, which has impressed many with its video generation capabilities. A famous Chinese director making a short film using it certainly builds its reputation further.
In a post on the Chinese social media platform Weibo, famed director and actor Jia Zhangke shared the short AI film titled Ji Zhangke’s Dance. In the film, two versions of Jia Zhangke interact. Both are created by AI, though one is presented as the ‘real’ Jia Zhangke and the other as the AI-ified version of him.
The ‘real’ Jia Zhangke asks his AI-ified version the question, ‘Other than imitating me, what can you do?’ The AI answers by inserting Jia Zhangke into several of his films, arguing and making jokes, and finally transporting him to celebrate the Chinese New Year.
In his post accompanying the short film, Jia Zhangke explains: “Seeing the two ‘Jia Zhangke’ conversing on screen creates a strange sense of time travel. From black and white to colour, from silent to sound, from film to digital, film has evolved over the years. Every change has been accompanied by doubt and unease. But the development of AI has been so rapid, from being ‘obviously fake’ a few years ago to today being able to generate a fairly well-made video from a single sentence—it’s fast.”
He continues, “I’m not worried about technology ‘replacing’ film. From its inception, film has always coexisted with new technologies. The camera itself was once an unsettling invention, but today it’s commonplace. What truly matters is how people use technology.”
Commenters on the post were widely impressed with the video, though also often concerned with the ethical ramifications of such high-quality AI. One highly up voted comment said: “AI is so powerful that it’s hard to distinguish between real and fake; it’s a bit scary, but also a bit exciting. The trend is unstoppable.”
As for the question in the short film, Jia Zhangke’s own answer in the post was simply “I’m the same as AI, still learning.”
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