To encourage adoption, the company said it will offer AI creators an additional 20 per cent share of advertising and membership revenue.Chinese video streaming platform iQiyi Inc expects artificial intelligence (AI) to create the bulk of its films and shows within the next five years, marking what the company calls a major shift in the entertainment industry and triggering its biggest corporate overhaul since it was founded in 2010, according to a Bloomberg report.
The report added that the Beijing-based company plans to transform its video app and website into a more social-media-style platform hosting largely AI-generated content as video generation models mature, founder and CEO Gong Yu said during iQiyi’s annual content showcase.
As part of this transition, iQiyi officially launched Nadou Pro, an AI toolkit that it said can manage nearly the entire filmmaking workflow, including scriptwriting, storyboarding and final rendering.
“It’s once in a decade. We have to take the tide as it comes,” Gong said.
Type of content production
The company’s AI pivot is aimed at reversing a multi-year slump in revenue, which has been pressured by the rapid rise of short-video platforms such as ByteDance’s Douyin. Gong said iQiyi will continue to invest in professionally produced content, but part of its capital will be redirected towards building AI services in the near term.
iQiyi also unveiled a new social-video app, designed to capture mass-market interest in AI-generated video tools. Gong said the company is targeting the release of a commercially successful AI-generated film as early as this summer.
iQiyi, along with Alibaba Group and Tencent Holdings, remains one of the dominant players in China’s online video streaming market, although user attention has increasingly fragmented due to the popularity of short-form content.
The Nadou Pro suite will rely on AI models from multiple Chinese competitors, including Alibaba, ByteDance and Kuaishou, while iQiyi plans to introduce an international version powered by models such as Google Veo 3.1, Gong said.
The toolkit will also include an intellectual property library, enabling creators to use iQiyi’s virtual assets and signed talent to generate new content. To demonstrate the capabilities, iQiyi is rolling out 16 Nadou-produced films, spanning genres such as science fiction and anime.
AI product creation push
To encourage adoption, the company said it will offer AI creators an additional 20 per cent share of advertising and membership revenue.
The AI push comes as Hollywood continues to debate the impact of AI on jobs and creative work, even as major studios and platforms including Netflix and Amazon increasingly experiment with the technology to reduce production costs.
iQiyi’s revenue is estimated to have declined 13 per cent in the first quarter of this year. The company recently filed for a Hong Kong listing, joining a broader trend of Chinese tech firms seeking access to capital closer to home.
Beyond AI, iQiyi is also expanding into overseas markets and physical entertainment. The company said its overseas membership revenue rose more than 30 per cent last year, though it remains a small share of overall revenue. It has also opened an indoor theme park in Yangzhou, monetising its content library beyond the streaming platform.
Gong said he believes AI could help China’s film industry break out of a cycle of rising production costs and declining output by making content creation cheaper and faster.
Published On Apr 21, 2026 at 12:44 PM IST
Join the community of 2M+ industry professionals.
Subscribe to Newsletter to get latest insights & analysis in your inbox.
Get updates on your preferred social platform
Follow us for the latest news, insider access to events and more.