The Chinese AI that creates hyper-realistic videos and challenges Hollywood.
Beijing, Feb 23 (EFE)
A year after DeepSeek shook the global artificial intelligence (AI) industry with its chatbot, China is back at the center of the technological debate with the hyper-realistic videos of Seedance 2.0, ByteDance’s video tool that opens a new battle in the sector and reignites the controversy over copyright in Hollywood.
Since its launch this month, the tool has grabbed headlines, prompted warnings from the US film industry, and sparked reflection within the audiovisual sector. Here are the key points to understand its impact:
‘Deepseek Moment’
The launch of Seedance 2.0 has been described in Chinese media as a new ‘DeepSeek moment’, referring to the emergence, in early 2025, of the DeepSeek R1 model, which surprised US technology companies and shook up markets by demonstrating China’s ability to compete in advanced reasoning models at a lower cost.
The local press has summarized the sequence as “last year was DS (DeepSeek), this year is SD (Seedance 2.0)”, a formula that links both launches around the Lunar New Year and presents them as consecutive milestones in the development of AI.
The Bytedance label
Seedance bears the imprint of ByteDance, the tech giant that owns TikTok and its Chinese equivalent, Douyin. From the outset, ByteDance has been able to integrate the tool into its ecosystem of services, which boasts hundreds of millions of users in China.
Financial author Jin Duan argued in the local media outlet The Paper that the leap in the model reflects that competition in AI-generated video “has moved from algorithm to comprehensive force” and that “the hegemony of computing is reshaping the rules of the sector,” in a context where the company has intensified its investment in computing infrastructure.
Hyperrealistic results
In the days following its release, videos generated with Seedance 2.0 circulated on social media showing cinematic-looking scenes, such as a fictional fight between Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise or action sequences with recognizable characters from major franchises, which many internet users claimed they could not distinguish from real images.
Short clips with complex choreography, synchronized sound effects, and fluid camera movements, ranging from fights to simulated trailers, also went viral, leading some creators to claim that the model had reached a “director” level in audiovisual production.
Impact on audiovisual creation
Chinese director Jia Zhangke, winner of the Golden Lion in Venice and the Best Screenplay award at Cannes, collaborated with Seedance to produce a short film in which two AI-generated versions of himself appear conversing and stating that “he is not worried about technology replacing cinema,” but rather “how people use technology.”
Furthermore, he highlighted that today “a single phrase is enough to generate a video with a fairly high level of polish.”
Similarly, Feng Ji, producer of the hit video game ‘Black Myth: Wukong’, warned that with tools like Seedance “the childhood of AIGC (artificial intelligence generated content) is over.”
Towards scale production
Beyond the initial virality, Chinese financial firms have pointed to a possible turning point in audiovisual production.
For Huatai Securities, Seedance is moving towards a “controllable creation” that could facilitate its integration into professional production processes.
Meanwhile, BOC Securities considered that the leap in the model involves going from “generating a scene” to “completing a work”, which would allow for scaling up content production in a faster, more standardized way and with lower structural costs.
Controversy in Hollywood
Since its launch, the tool has led to the spread of videos on the internet featuring characters from franchises such as ‘Star Wars’ and Marvel, which led the Motion Picture Association (MPA) and major studios to denounce possible massive copyright infringements.
Disney accused ByteDance of facilitating a “pirated library” and engaging in “fraudulent appropriation” of intellectual property.
ByteDance responded that it “respects intellectual property rights” and is addressing the concerns raised.
