2026 China Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival: Filmmakers discuss the AI wave

China News Service, Xiamen, November 10 (Wu Guanbiao) The 2026 China Golden Rooster and Hundred Flowers Film Festival will be held in Xiamen, Fujian Province from November 6th to 10th. During the film festival, people are no longer talking about what artificial intelligence (AI) can do, but also what it can’t do and how to make good use of it.

The report "Attitudes and Actions: The AIGC Moment of the Global Film Industry" released at the main forum of the film festival, the Golden Rooster Gulangyu Forum, shows that the global film industry is actively exploring the path of integrating AI and professional creation, which has become an industry consensus and direction of action.

Actor Chen Jianbin talked about the Internet-famous "AI Chen Jianbin" at the film festival - "he" in the AI ​​video can sing, dance, and even "act." Chen Jianbin said that in the past few years, "AI Chen Jianbin" has become more and more like him. Some clips are so realistic that even he himself was stunned, "I have never acted in this clip before."

Chen Jianbin believes that what "AI Chen Jianbin" provides to the audience is richness and diversity. In reality, what he can provide is soul and spirit, which cannot be replaced by AI.

Well-known director Zhang Yimou analyzed that the birth of AI will have little impact on "physical performances" such as concerts, dramas, and dance dramas, but it will have a huge impact on the "virtual image" industry such as movies. He noticed that many people in airports and stations were watching short dramas and short videos with their heads down. Some AI short dramas were not only free of charge, but also gave money to the audience. "A large number of people are watching, so why go into the cinema?"

Zhang Yimou said that for young directors, AI is a new challenge that they have to face. At the same time, the development of AI has also brought a kind of technological equality, "everyone can tell the image story in his heart loudly to the world." He advised young directors to be themselves and tell stories that are most emotional and deeply experienced in their hearts.

Taiwanese director Lee Woo-ning imagines that in the future, film and television crews will only need one or a few computers, and a director can complete the work independently? However, he believes that although AI has been widely used in film production in recent years, it is difficult to replace actors' transmission and expression of the characters' delicate emotions in front of the camera - this is the core value of actors.

Mu Chen, director of the Damai Entertainment Beacon Research Institute, pointed out that more and more audiences are switching from simply watching AI movies to using AI tools to participate in the content ecology, and creations such as IP linkage, plot rewriting, and ending endings are emerging in endlessly. "The value of AI at this stage is more reflected in extending the life cycle of the film and broadening the boundaries of audience participation."

Qiu Sheng, a young director and screenwriter, believes that there is a common problem in AI creation right now. “Many people hurriedly generate a video and claim that it is brand new and original.” He said that only by admitting that AI images are rooted in old images can we truly create something new. "So we must continue to ask where these images come from, and where the 'shadow' in AI comes from, in order to truly understand the AI ​​images." (End)