ByteDance Presses Play on AI Video Creator While Sora Appears to Pause
TikTok creators may soon be adding AI-generated content to their dance routines. ByteDance, TikTok’s parent company, has launched a new text-to-video mobile app exclusively for the Chinese market, called Jimeng AI. While Jimeng is geographically limited for now, it could prove to be a serious competitor to other AI creators, most notably OpenAI’s Sora.
Similar to other AI video creation platforms, Jimeng processes text prompts and creates short videos that attempt to match the description provided by the user. In this case, that means prompts written in Chinese, which is not an option that every AI video tool offers. Jimeng (which means “dream” in Chinese) can be used for all sorts of entertainment, marketing, education, and other purposes. Jimeng also offers an AI text-to-image generator as part of the overall package.
While the Android and iOS apps are only available to download in China, that’s still a huge potential customer base that ByteDance could then leverage to use its other products. There’s no direct link to TikTok, but the videos are automatically formatted in a way that’s perfect for the social media platform. If you’re in China, you can subscribe to Jimeng and shoot around 168 videos or 2,050 images per month for a cost of 69 yuan ($9.65) for a monthly subscription, 79 yuan for a one-month trial, or 659 yuan for a year.
Jimeng’s website highlights a wide range of both cartoonish and realistic videos. The examples contain remarkable consistency, even in the compilation of clips, as seen in the video below. The caption (provided by Google Translate) explains: “The Panda National Treasure Team is also participating in the Paris Olympics! The Paris Olympics are in full swing. Using AI video, China’s national treasure, the panda Huahua, is personified and depicted as a Chinese athlete, representing Chinese Olympic athletes to fight bravely in the Paris Olympics and win the gold medal!”
Dream worldwide
The interest in AI video makers is quickly being matched by a slew of options from new and existing AI developers. OpenAI made waves when it announced Sora , and has already put the model to commercial use, such as on the recent short film Toys”R”Us . Impressive as it is, Sora isn’t yet available for public use, which creates a window of opportunity for other brands, including Runway and Midjourney . Jimeng isn’t the only China-based AI maker, either. There are several startups with variations on the theme. Notably, Chinese digital content provider Kuaishou’s app is available globally, making its Kling AI text-to-video model much more accessible.
For ByteDance, Jimeng AI could help it expand its position in consumer technology, both independently and by bolstering TikTok and making it more dominant in social video services. As these technologies continue to evolve, expect them to become more common and perhaps even ubiquitous, much like the video and photo filters once associated with Snapchat are now everywhere.
On the other hand, now that ByteDance has been forced to sell TikTok or pull it from the US market (the company is currently embroiled in legal proceedings), the extent of Jimeng AI’s global reach may be limited.