Black technology: a super empire spanning two worlds

Chapter 383 [Performance of the Video Generation Tool in its First Week]

Now that new technologies have arrived, with AI-assisted production, video production efficiency has increased exponentially, while production costs have decreased exponentially.

Taking Bilibili's "A Mortal's Journey to Immortality" as an example, if the production team were to use AI Xiaojing's video generation tool to assist in the production of the anime series, the cost per episode could be reduced to around 2 yuan. Moreover, aside from the script and plot, the special effects would be several levels higher than they are now.

Such a huge leap forward means that, without integrating the AI ​​Xiaojing video generation tool, content creators will absolutely be unable to compete with their peers who have integrated this auxiliary tool in the future.

The production team that integrates AI Xiaojing has production costs that are dozens of times lower than yours, and efficiency that is three to five times faster. You update one episode a week, while they can update two or even three episodes a week. Moreover, their special effects and picture quality far surpass yours. How can you compete with them?

If you don't want to be completely outmatched, then you have no choice but to also get AI-assisted content creation.

Just after Tencent announced its plan, other companies and peers were not to be outdone. Only five hours later, two major video websites, iQiyi and Youku, also announced that they would follow suit, and surprisingly, they all entered the market with the animation section as their entry point.

This was unexpected, yet also quite reasonable.

At present, it is most appropriate to start with the animation sector, because animation is based on virtual characters and does not involve real actors or artists.

Moreover, the current animation market is actually quite large. In recent years, the domestic animation market has developed rapidly. In terms of content creation, including animation, comics, and online animation, the total output value in 2023 exceeded 3000 billion yuan, of which the online animation market size was 400 billion yuan, showing a rapid growth momentum.

This shows that the animation market is actually a very large market.

Just after the three major domestic online video websites, Youku, iQiyi, and Tencent Video, announced their entry into the market, Bilibili followed suit, and all the major video website platforms announced their plans to expand their content ecosystem in the animation market.

Meanwhile, major domestic animation production companies and small and medium-sized studios have also followed suit and integrated with AI Xiaojing.

All the contestants got "rolled up".

These past few days have been a real treat for anime fans in China, as the production companies of many currently airing anime have announced new plans, with many seasonal anime announcing that they will be changed to yearly series with continuous updates.

Several animation production companies that specialize in "short-form anime" have announced that their anime series, which were originally 8 minutes long per episode, are now less than 5 minutes long after the opening and ending credits are removed. Fans have complained that the episodes are "terrifyingly short." However, these production companies have now announced that they will increase the length of subsequent episodes to around 20 minutes.

These short-form anime series focus on a thrilling storyline, but the animation quality is extremely poor and cannot be compared to high-quality, top-tier anime series.

But all of that will be a thing of the past. After connecting to the AI ​​Xiaojing video productivity tool, there will be virtually no difference in image quality and special effects.

The picture quality will definitely be top-notch because the production cost has dropped exponentially. With a production cost of 2 yuan per episode, every animation production company can manage its budget.

Two animation production companies went even further, directly "scalping up" production capacity and announcing that their annual series would be updated twice a week instead of once a week.

Clearly, the dramatic increase in production efficiency and the exponential drop in production costs have given the manufacturers confidence.

These two animation production companies thought that rather than being forced to follow their competitors and release two or even three episodes a week after a while, they might as well take the initiative and get ahead of the competition.

When competitors saw this, they got anxious and announced plans to add more episodes.

Everyone's smart enough to know that the audience is limited and won't grow that fast in the short term. But with the emergence of new technologies, content production will soon experience explosive growth, and everyone has 24 hours a day.

At this point, every anime series has to compete with its rivals for the precious time of its viewers.

Anime series that are currently being serialized are either announcing extended runtimes or additional episodes. Several major video streaming platforms have announced that there are one or two thousand new anime series slated for release in the new year, which will all be launched and serialized in a cluster within six months.

When comic book fans saw this incredibly long list, they exclaimed, "Wow, we can't finish reading it all!"

...Lingjing Technology Headquarters, Chairman's Office.

At this moment, Xiao Yu was listening to Yun Shu's work report: "AI Xiao Jing's video tool has been online for a week, and the data performance of the first week has been preliminarily calculated."

Xiao Yu asked succinctly, "How is it?"

Yun Shu immediately replied: "For the personal version, the cumulative number of paid users has exceeded 10 million, reaching 1097 million. Among them, the number of subscribers who pay 198 yuan per month accounts for about 81.5%, or about 895 million; the number of subscribers who pay 1980 yuan accounts for 18%, or about 197 million; and the number of subscribers who pay 198,000 yuan accounts for 0.5%, or about 50,000."

According to this data, approximately 5 small and medium-sized enterprises or independent studios have connected to AI Xiaojing and paid a package fee of 19.8 yuan.

Yun Shu added, "The total revenue generated is approximately 156.72 billion."

Xiao Yu nodded in satisfaction: "Hmm, not bad. This business segment has great potential and is expected to add hundreds of billions of yuan in revenue to the company in the future."

There are currently 21 enterprise-level solution providers, with an annual fee of 1.5 million yuan. These 21 companies have collectively generated 31.5 billion yuan in revenue.

However, in terms of earning power, it still can't compare to the personal version because the audience base is on a completely different scale.

With tens of millions of subscribers, Lingjing Technology earns 156.72 billion yuan in revenue per month. If subscribers stay for a full year, without considering new users, the company could earn an astonishing 1880 billion yuan.

However, operating costs are not low, mainly due to the high level of computing power supply, as the basic computing power provided is not low.

利润率预计大约在12%~18%左右波动，也就是如果一年的订阅总收入1880亿元，利润额大约在225亿至338亿区间。

There are profit fluctuations exceeding 10 billion, depending on the frequency of subscribers' use of the tool.

Because the monthly fee is fixed, if a creator produces a lot of videos using the tool within a month, more computing resources will be needed, and the platform will have to increase its computing power expenditure.

Conversely, if a creator uses the tool to make a short video within a month, it won't consume much computing power. For the platform, the computing power expenditure is small, and the saved computing power expenditure becomes the company's profit.

Overall, the profit margin of this business is not high, but it is not bad either. Moreover, given its large scale, its earning power is still very strong.

In theory, the less a user uses the tools after paying a monthly fee, the less computing power the platform spends, and the greater its profits will be.

After all, the monthly fee is fixed. Whether you use it once a month or 100 times a month, you still have to pay 198 yuan.

However, Lingjing Technology, as the platform provider, does not want users to use the product infrequently; on the contrary, it hopes that users will use it as frequently as possible.

While this will increase the platform's computing power costs, it will generate stronger revenue from digital asset packages, computing power leasing services, and cloud storage.

With increased usage frequency, the demand for computing power resources is strong. When purchasing additional computing power resources, Lingjing Technology charges a 5% channel fee and technical service fee.

Furthermore, this means that the scale of content production by content creators will be very large, and the market for trading digital asset packages will be very large. For each transaction of a virtual digital asset package, the platform will charge a 5% commission, which includes channel fees, transaction fees, and technical service fees.

The larger the total transaction volume, the greater the platform's revenue, so naturally, they want to produce as much content as possible.

……

(End of this chapter)