Black technology: a super empire spanning two worlds

Chapter 382 [Digital Asset Package]

For the next hour or so, Shi Hongtai kept learning about the AI ​​productivity tools released by Lingjing Technology, trying to figure out exactly what these tools could do.

"Hmm? Digital asset package? What is that?" Shi Hongtai clicked in curiously to take a look.

After learning about it, Shi Hongtai suddenly realized that this asset package is used by users to save modeling props. For example, if a user creates a character model, they can save it in the asset package after completing the modeling.

To produce a film or television work, you definitely need a lot of character models, including non-human models, whether they are live-action models or 3D or 2D character models, forming a rich set of modeling assets.

After the user creates the model, these model assets can be imported into the video production process, including other costume and prop models, etc.

Furthermore, the models can be reused. For example, the male and female leads, who starred in this work, can also star in the next work. This depends on the creator's choice or whether the audience accepts it. If it is very popular and the audience's demand is high, it can also be used in the next work.

"The copyright belongs to the creator? That's great!" Shi Hongtai was pleasantly surprised. If this were Tencent, even the game accounts under its umbrella wouldn't belong to the players; it would be written in a user agreement.

Given Tencent's practices, the copyright of AI-generated models on its platform will absolutely not belong to the creator; it will definitely belong to the platform, and users will only have the right to use them.

Clearly, the copyright ownership to the creator greatly surprised Shi Hongtai and other creators.

With the copyright owned by themselves, creators will undoubtedly put more effort into modeling and strive for excellence.

In addition, Shi Hongtai was pleasantly surprised to discover that the digital assets of the AI ​​Xiaojing platform, the virtual digital props assets created by users, can be directly placed on the platform for paid licensing.

This means that transactions are possible, and the AI ​​Xiaojing platform provides third-party platform transaction guarantees for all creators.

For example, someone created a character model, and Shi Hongtai took a liking to the model and wanted it to star in his work.

He can contact the copyright holder of the model and obtain a paid license. There are various ways to obtain a license, such as directly buying out the model, which means transferring all copyrights. If this is the case, the copyright of the model belongs to Shi Hongtai.

It can also be licensed through a lease agreement, during which time it cannot be licensed to any other third party.

It could also be an exclusive license, etc. In short, the licensing method is negotiated by the buyer and seller. After reaching a consensus, an electronic contract is drafted, and then the transaction is completed on the platform.

Regarding transaction prices, the platform does not participate in price guidance. In layman's terms, the buyer and seller negotiate the price themselves, and if neither party objects, the transaction can proceed. This is not much different from an e-commerce platform, except that the AI ​​Xiaojing platform trades digital assets.

The platform will take a 5% cut of each transaction, which includes channel fees, transaction fees, and technical service fees.

In addition, the platform also provides cloud storage services for data, as the massive amounts of digital modeling asset packages produced definitely need to be stored.

It's not impossible for small and medium-sized studios and independent producers to store their own data locally, but the main problem is that they are already short of funds during the startup and development stage. Local storage would require them to buy their own hardware, and importing and exporting data would be troublesome.

Purchasing cloud services directly on the platform is more convenient, as they can be used and transferred immediately. This is especially true when sellers and buyers are trading digital assets. Once the transaction is complete, the buyer can simply download the digital asset package from the platform.

"Lingjing Technology's fees are quite reasonable. Unlike other big companies that abuse their platform monopoly and bully customers, it's truly rare," Shi Hongtai said after learning about it, silently giving Brother Xiao a thumbs up. These fees are acceptable.

Industry insiders were surprised; Lingjing Technology moved incredibly fast, launching a complete and mature business model simultaneously. Clearly, Lingjing Technology provides productivity tools and profits from content creators, reflected in their costs. Ultimately, however, it's the consumers and viewers who foot the bill: content creators produce content, and consumers purchase and consume that content.

……

The "content creation king" attribute of Chinese people has once again been demonstrated. Within two days of the launch of Lingjing Technology's AI video generation tool, a huge number of creators began to use this tool to assist in their content creation.

Numerous small and medium-sized studios and independent producers have entered the market, and even large production companies have not hesitated to embrace the new technology and have joined in.

Everyone wants to reap the first wave of benefits because everyone knows that the first wave is the easiest, with little competition. You can easily attract a lot of traffic by simply posting AI-generated videos online.

In the initial stage, the novelty of the content is great, so there's no need for high-quality content; just top-notch visual effects can attract a lot of viewers.

Everyone knows that this window of opportunity to "make money" is very short. Once a large amount of content floods the market, it will become increasingly difficult to monetize any newly generated video content.

Two days later, Tencent Video announced a budget of 10 billion yuan to enrich its content ecosystem, making Tencent Video the first of the three major online video websites in China, iQiyi, Youku, and Tencent Video, to embrace emerging technologies.

Fujiko's move was both swift and aggressive, yet also somewhat conservative.

Because this 10 billion yuan plan is focused on animation production, no corresponding plans have been announced for live-action films or TV series yet, which reflects a conservative approach.

After all, live-action movies and TV series involve a wide range of issues.

If the transformation fails and you offend all sorts of actors and directors in the entertainment industry, you'll be in a difficult situation.

However, Tencent clearly attaches great importance to this emerging technological trend. After weighing the options, they decided to start with the animation sector first. This sector will not involve live actors or artists, and they can use the animation sector to test the waters and see how it goes.

Fujiko's plan aims to reduce content production costs by integrating AI Xiaojing and further promote the film and animation adaptations of its online novel IP library. Tencent's full entertainment ecosystem holds the largest number of online novel IP copyrights in China, so there is no shortage of IP adaptations and animations.

With the support of AI Xiaojing's video generation tool, just 10 billion yuan would be enough to produce 500 to 1000 anime adaptations of online novel IPs.

The visual effects quality is not only on par with Bilibili's top domestic animation "A Record of a Mortal's Journey to Immortality" and Tencent Video's own top annual series such as "Battle Through the Heavens" and "Perfect World," but will also far surpass the current level.

If we were to rely on the previous level of productivity, producing 1000 high-quality animated films with a budget of 10 billion would be pure fantasy and a pipe dream.

For example, the production cost of the first season of Bilibili's top-rated Chinese animation series "Fanren" reached 2700 million yuan. According to Yuanli Animation, the total investment in the production of this animation was at least 1.58 ​​million yuan.

The production costs of top-rated anime series on several video websites are relatively high, with the production cost per episode ranging from 80 to 200 million yuan. Assuming one episode is released per week and there are approximately 52 episodes over a year, the production cost would be between 4200 million and 1 million yuan.

In other words, without the support of AI Xiaojing's video generation tool, Tencent could only produce 10 to 20 annual anime series at most with 10 billion yuan. Compared to 500 to 1000 series, the production capacity of the two companies differs by tens of times, and Tencent's efficiency is several times higher.

……

(End of this chapter)