CHINA’S first animated series “Qianqiu Shisong” generated by artificial intelligence (AI) was put on air via China Central TV Channel 1 on Monday.

The 26-episode animated series illustrates scenes and figures described in China’s ancient poems and verses. Each episode lasts about seven minutes in length. Industry observers said that the broadcast of the first AI-generated animated series may accelerate the application of text-to-video production in China, further optimize the process of making films, dramas, games and commercials.

“Qianqiu Shisong” was co-developed by Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and China Media Group (CMG) under the brand of CMG Media GPT. CMG Media GPT can learn ancient Chinese poems and verses by “being fed” with massive data of past poem-themed TV programs, said researchers from the laboratory, noting that the technology significantly compressed the animation making time.

“AI will not replace human but increase human’s working efficiency. For example, our team used to make one episode each month, but now we can make three episodes each month with assistance from AI,” said the director of “Qianqiu Shisong,” whose name is not revealed.

On Chinese social media platform Weibo, many netizens said that animation generated by AI was a smart approach to popularizing Chinese culture as the cutting-edge technology can inject new life into ancient poems and verses. Other netizens noted that it was a valuable opportunity to practice China’s AI technology but Chinese AI researchers should see the gap between world-leading AI models and theirs, and make more efforts to catch up.   (Global Times)