WAIC Postscript: Beyond the large model narrative, an unconventional start for a company with hundreds of millions of users

The attitude a company adopts toward AI today may well serve as a reflection of its core values.

The recently concluded WAIC showcased the current explosive heat of the AI industry. Countless tech practitioners gathered in Shanghai; even scalpers' tickets were driven to sky-high prices yet still impossible to secure, and neither sweltering heat nor thunderstorms could dampen people's enthusiasm for embracing change amid the AI wave.

The stance toward the variable of AI is not merely a personal choice, but a critical point that enterprises must weigh. The attitude with which an enterprise seeks change in the AI tide determines its posture when facing the future.

At this year's WAIC, an AI guitar drew widespread attention. This world's first generative AI guitar, named "TemPolor", requires no music theory background at all: users can pick up the instrument and play along with the rhythm of light and shadow to create songs.

Behind this guitar is Timi Studio, an internet technology company that once developed products with a user base of 200 million. Currently, Timi Studio has built a full-stack layout covering "model-application-hardware" in the AI music track, making it the first manufacturer in the industry to complete such a layout.

In Timi Studio's AI vision, technology should always serve the essential needs of human beings, rather than creating estrangement or replacing people. As a company that started with mobile voice services, Timi Studio has built an ecosystem centered on voice, connectivity, and Gen Z interest-based socializing, where "companionship between people" is its most valuable asset.

Based on this, it chose to develop new businesses in its familiar vertical scenarios. Long Ling, Co-founder of Timi Studio, told 36Kr that Timi Studio currently has corresponding businesses in AI music, AI dubbing and translation, AI 3D and other fields, with the core focus on its proficient digital entertainment scenarios to create AI products and services that meet the needs of diverse interest groups.

"If our goal is to achieve more long-term growth in the AI era, we must recognize that the value of AI lies in delivering more groundbreaking user experiences and business models. I need to evolve our company from one that merely possesses AI technology to a technology enterprise driven by AI technology, turning AI from a cost center into the core of value, and making it the underlying engine for our strategic decision-making, product innovation and talent management," said Long Ling.

More notably, beyond external product forms, a top-down efficiency transformation is taking place inside Timi Studio. AI is no longer the exclusive tool of the technical department, but is defined as a "working partner" for every frontline business employee.

This in-depth reconstruction of the organizational soil is precisely the posture of embracing the AI wave. Because only when everyone can think about how to use AI to solve problems, can Timi Studio's AI ecosystem truly come alive.

No matter observing the products from an external perspective, or looking at the organization's posture toward AI from an internal perspective, the "people-oriented" style and attitude seem to be indispensable for AI enterprises. In the reconstruction of real life by technology, Timi Studio may provide a highly valuable observation sample of an internet manufacturer's AI evolution, and continuously pursuing certainty through actions is what makes it a remarkably bold player in this game for the brave.

Built on voice genes, with AI products leading the charge

In 1995, the American fantasy adventure film *Jumanji* directed by Joe Johnston was released. The film tells the story of a mysterious board game "Jumanji" that can trigger dangerous events corresponding to the squares players land on after rolling the dice in the real world, and the game will not stop until someone wins.

Song Ke, Founder and CEO of Timi Studio, once shared in an internal speech: "In an era where AI technology is advancing by leaps and bounds, every choice is full of unknown risks, but also brings infinite possibilities. Prosperity is a carnival for everyone, while adversity is the paradise for the brave. Only among the brave who embrace AI can the leaders of the future era emerge."

For any startup, opportunities and challenges always coexist. Enterprises that devote themselves to AI are like playing a mysterious game of "Jumanji", choosing to roll the dice in the AI wave full of uncertainty — All in AI, All in China.

Timi Studio's attitude toward AI is not drifting with the tide, but pragmatic and rational. In terms of product forms, it is also thinking about how to let more people feel the charm of AI and bring technology closer to people.

For example, the Timi Studio team launched "Tunee", China's first conversational music creation agent, as well as the world's first generative AI guitar "TemPolor". Its products are highly user-friendly. In Long Ling's view, the true value of AI lies in greatly lowering the technical threshold and broadening the boundaries of musical expression. From models and applications to hardware, Timi Studio adheres to technological and product innovation to create a more immersive creation experience for users, making music truly integrated into the daily lives of ordinary people.

The creativity of the AI guitar lies in that it gives everyone the possibility of music creation. It is no longer a game monopolized by elites, but any young person who knows nothing about music theory can generate songs with strong emotional resonance through a single sentence or a burst of inspiration. This is also the best demonstration of a good AI product: ordinary people can quickly acquire capabilities they did not have before without arduous practice.

"We always insist that AI is not meant to replace human beings, but to enhance human creativity and emotional expression. AI can amplify human capabilities 100 times or 1000 times, but there must still be a '1' in front of it — human imagination, aesthetics, and judgment are that '1'," Long Ling told 36Kr.

In terms of performance, the TemPolor AI guitar achieved GMV exceeding 10 million yuan within 3 months of launch. Tunee has also become one of the fastest breakout products in China's AI Agent track, which has allowed Timi Studio to build deep first-mover advantages in the direction of integrated AI music software and hardware.

Making AI music easily accessible to ordinary consumers is the first step. The next proposition for AIGC is how to make high-quality content seen by more people, enter the international market, and achieve sustainable commercialization. Based on this, Timi Studio has built All Voice Lab, the world's leading one-stop video translation and AI dubbing platform. Taking self-developed AI technology as the foundation, it creates a full-link solution for the entertainment industry integrating multilingual translation, high-emotion dubbing, and overseas social media monetization.

For Timi Studio, the achievements of MaskGCT may be the era's gift for its "people-oriented" philosophy.

In the second half of 2024, Timi Studio and The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen jointly open-sourced the MaskGCT speech large model, refreshing several global SOTA records. At that time, if we only focused on the technological competition, it might be difficult to tell the difference. However, from the perspective of industry gaps, new content forms such as Chinese micro dramas and domestic animation are gradually becoming popular in the global market, and Chinese culture is ushering in an unprecedented "golden period of going global", which means content localization will become a key part.

There are no AI translation and dubbing products on the market specifically for film, television and animation content, which is exactly the opportunity for MaskGCT's commercial implementation. Timi Studio also quickly adjusted its direction, launching the AI video translation and dubbing product "All Voice Lab" within 2-3 months, hoping to further lower the threshold for domestic content to go global through AI.

For example, during the model training process, more emphasis is placed on introducing knowledge of cultural backgrounds and custom differences across regions, so as to achieve more accurate, professional and idiomatic translation results. In terms of product functions and experience, through Timi Studio's past experience in overseas short dramas and in-depth co-creation with short drama overseas clients, we have developed a one-stop translation and dubbing workflow that truly adapts to real business processes. Within one month of launch, we have reached cooperation with many leading film and television companies, quickly gaining positive feedback from the market.

This creative breakthrough solves the long-standing "impossible triangle" dilemma of "quality, speed and cost" in multilingual content production faced by the overseas expansion industry. The cost of AI translation and dubbing is 90% lower than manual work, the speed is increased by more than 50 times, and the monthly translation volume reaches 500,000 minutes. The content has been exported to more than 30 countries and regions around the world, enabling Chinese short dramas, films, animations and other content to go overseas on a large scale and with high fidelity.

In terms of corporate genes, Timi Studio originated from mobile voice services, and audio technology is its inherent core barrier.

Compared with the "mechanical feel" and "script-reading sense" of traditional speech synthesis, the root cause lies in that its training corpus is too regular. Whether it is customer service conversations or podcast recordings, the intonation of speakers is generally in a rational and stable controlled state, lacking the improvisational elements in real human communication.

Therefore, for Timi Studio, which has exclusive audio technology, choosing its familiar vertical scenarios to develop new businesses, digging deep and refining in vertical fields, and being a "doer" that solves real problems, is undoubtedly the best springboard.

For Timi Studio, AI is a new business. The "new" here refers more to the ability to keep innovating. Judging from Timi Studio's team, it also has the confidence to jump into the game for the brave countless times. For example, Timi Studio's AI music team came from developing online pop music apps, and they started exploring the combination of music and AI very early. Most of the members are scarce talents who understand both music and technology.

"It is very difficult to form a team like ours in a short time. Of course, the foundation comes from our persistence in what we love, our respect for users, and our pursuit of innovation — these things flowing in our blood that others cannot copy," said Long Ling.

The people-oriented team structure allows Timi Studio to start a new chapter at any time. Facing AI, they do not just treat AI as an accessory or a supplementary item, but rethink, build and operate a brand-new species based on AI.

Make every team member an AI player

"Cultivating an AI atmosphere cannot stop at the R&D end, but must reach a consensus across the entire company: everyone embraces AI, everyone dares to use AI, and everyone is good at using AI," Long Ling stated.

To embrace new changes, what is more important is a continuously iterating team and a soil that can nurture AI. Based on this, Timi Studio upgraded its annual internal "Hack Day" event, previously held only by the R&D team, to a "Maker Day" open to all employees, and put forward the core proposition: "What sparks can AIGC and Timi Studio create together?"

Employees form project teams on their own, bringing together talents from product, operation, R&D and other positions. Driven by cutting-edge technologies and interest creation, they use AIGC tools to jointly explore how to integrate large model capabilities into Timi Studio's business scenarios.

In addition to the iteration of internal organization, Timi Studio also fertilizes the soil from the outside.

In recent years, Timi Studio has visited major universities to carry out in-depth industry-university-research cooperation related to artificial intelligence, and introduce outstanding external AI talents.

Long Ling told 36Kr that in the AI era, the way to "nurture the soil" will also change accordingly. First of all, the organizational structure can be more adapted to local conditions. For traditional businesses, a relatively stable process-based management can be maintained. For AI-native businesses, a flatter and more flexible organizational environment is needed to better adapt to the rapid development and uncertainty of AI technology.

Secondly, "embracing AI" should become the default capability of the organization, rather than an extra burden for employees. We always advocate "interest creates value", encouraging employees to use AI more in their daily work, and gradually internalize it into organizational capabilities, instead of letting employees passively execute tasks. At the same time, the company provides everyone with a better AI learning environment, allowing employees to make mistakes within a reasonable range, so that everyone dares to innovate and break through.

Facts have also proved that only when every frontline employee is thinking about how to use AI to optimize their own business, can the enterprise's AI soil truly breed a vibrant ecosystem.

For example, the exploration of AI music is actually full of difficulties, because the evaluation criteria for music are inherently subjective and diverse, and it is even more difficult to make AI fit human aesthetics. The Timi Studio team initially chose a traditional AI technical solution, using a preset framework to guide user creation, but the generated songs were like "opening a blind box" — sometimes amazing, sometimes deviating from aesthetics, and never reaching the ideal effect.

Over two years, the team kept designing different tasks, trying in multiple directions, and making choices and adjustments based on user needs. In this process, they also had to continuously deal with the matching problems of time, manpower and resources, as well as the gaps in training direction, training effect and data quality, and had to judge in time and adjust quickly.

Finally, Timi Studio successfully self-developed and launched "TemPolor", the world's first multimodal music generation large model, and released the V4.7 version during WAIC. According to third-party tests, compared with mainstream industry models such as Suno V5.5, it scores higher in indicators such as content enjoyment, work memorability and sound clarity, and its other indicators of musicality, coherence and naturalness are also in the first tier.

"Innovation is not afraid of taking detours. The key is to find the direction that truly meets user needs."

Waves change, the original aspiration remains unchanged

To understand Timi Studio's confidence and success in doing AI today, we have to turn the clock back more than a decade ago. Timi Studio's development history is essentially a path of continuous innovation.

In the early years, the mobile game industry was on the eve of an explosion. Medium/heavy competitive mobile games represented by *Honor of Kings* rose rapidly, but there was no easy-to-use real-time voice tool. Timi Studio keenly observed this seemingly small but crucial pain point, and launched TT Voice, which allows smooth team communication. In the first year after the product was launched, it attracted millions of young users.

But challenges have always existed. As mobile game giants began to build in-house voice functions in their games, large internet companies also entered this field on a large