"Are audiences still going to the cinema?" Zhang Yimou warns of the impact of AI, and it may be difficult to tell the truth from fiction in the future

Well-known Chinese director Zhang Yimou attended the 39th China Golden Rooster Awards Forum yesterday (7th) and expressed his views for the first time on the impact of artificial intelligence (AI) on the film industry. He said frankly that now that he walks into airports and high-speed rail stations, he can see people swiping their phones with their heads down to catch up on short dramas, which makes him worried: "Will audiences still go to the cinema?" He also predicts that AI technology will evolve rapidly, and in the next three to five years, the generated images may be able to be fake to the point of being real.

Zhang Yimou pointed out that short films are now not only free to watch, but sometimes even provide discounts for viewers, attracting a large number of people to use their spare time to watch the series. He believes that the impact of AI on live performances such as concerts, plays and musicals is relatively limited, but movies are also composed of digital images and may become the main target of the impact of AI technology.

When talking about whether AI can replace real actors, Zhang Yimou admitted that it is still difficult to completely replicate the delicate emotions of real-life performances, but the speed of technological updates is astonishing. He said bluntly: "But I think that in maybe three to five years, the iteration of technology will be very fast, and it can completely resemble reality." These words express his worries about the future of the film industry.

As for the science fiction movie "The Three-Body Problem" that is being prepared, Zhang Yimou revealed that the team has selected more than a dozen young elites born after 1990 to form an AI task force to assist in technical discussions and visual design. However, he emphasized that he would not be led away by new technologies and would still focus on scripts and stories. He believed that good stories that can truly move and attract audiences are the most important core of a movie.