STREAMING platform iQIYI has held the award ceremony for its first AI Short Film Competition, presenting a total of 11 awards to winning creators.

The competition attracted submissions from 2,300 creators across more than 30 countries. During Monday’s ceremony, iQIYI presented awards to 11 winners, including one first prize, three second prizes, five third prizes, and two special awards for Best Creativity and Best Narrative.

The submission period began July 15. Participants were required to submit short films lasting one to five minutes, created primarily using two leading AI tools: ByteDance’s Doubao video generation model Seedance 1.0 Pro or Google’s Veo 3.

The first-prize winner was “Happy Land” by Chen Youxue, a traditional filmmaker with over a decade of experience. He revealed at the ceremony that it took him just 10 days to complete the short film.

The film focuses on a brother and sister duo fleeing for their lives through war ruins. When the brother puts a scavenged VR headset on his sister, their harsh escape is transformed into a fantastical journey.

“AI makes it possible to realize ideas that couldn’t be filmed before,” Chen said. “It turns concepts that could be written but were difficult to shoot into reality.”

Among the three second-prize winners were “A Tree’s Imagination” by Wen Ye and “Alaya” by Pan Yu.

Pan noted that human-AI collaboration will become the norm, as AI helps break the constraints of human thinking and pushes beyond our capabilities. While AI’s magic transcends technical limits, the human creative mind will remain the fundamental premise in filmmaking, he added.

The competition attracted significant interest not only from professionals in animation, film, and publishing, but also from individual creators and fans. “These AI short films prove that professional background is no longer a barrier to creation in the AI era,” said Wen, who works as a full-time designer.

Several gaming and comic studios also submitted works. The head of a Hangzhou-based animation firm said they participated to explore AI’s potential for drama production and admitted plans to further investigate this technology to reduce production costs.

Jennie Shi, AI specialist at Google Cloud, expressed being deeply impressed by the AI short videos submitted to iQIYI. “If someone tells me today that AI works have no soul, I think they are biased,” she remarked.

According to Xie Danming, vice president and head of iQIYI’s Intelligent Platform Department, the company has been investing in AI since 2018. He explained that iQiyi has already deployed internal production tools that integrate large language model capabilities into its content workflow.

“The AI wave is an opportunity,” said iQIYI’s senior VP Chen Xiao, emphasizing that AI will not undermine the company’s strengths in long-form video but will instead “bring content creation and creativity truly together in a more focused and efficient way.”

iQIYI has established an AI Theater section on its platform for all audiences, aiming to bring AI-generated drama from experimental labs to mainstream viewers.

The AI Theater will focus on films over 15 minutes long, targeting one of the most challenging areas of traditional film and television production, according to Zhu Liang, VP and head of iQIYI’s Intelligent Production Department.

Meanwhile, iQIYI is advancing AI applications across multiple content types including animation, comics, drama, and films, with children’s programs expected to see key breakthroughs first, according to Li Zhen, head of the company’s Dali Studio.(SD-Agencies)