Do iQiyi, Youku, Tencent Video and Mango TV want to win back the audiences taken away by Hongguo with AI?

No TV series with real human actors has ever been broadcast on prime time slots of satellite TV channels before.

Not long ago, a TV series named *Later Journey to the West* was launched on Hunan TV and Mango TV, and took the top viewership among all provincial satellite TV channels in the same time period.

With 30 episodes of 40 minutes each, it tells the story that a thousand years after the pilgrimage for scriptures in the original *Journey to the West*, the second-generation protagonists of the story set foot on the pilgrimage road again.

At first glance, it seems no different from traditional long TV series, but every element of this show from characters to scenes is entirely AI-generated.

What is more unexpected is that for this 30-episode series, the production team only completed the first dozen episodes, and plans to produce and review the remaining episodes while they are being broadcast.

Frankly speaking, this kind of mode has never appeared on TV before.

The X.PIN team did some simple research and found that Mango TV is the producer of this series, and it adopted its own AIGC content creation platform "Mango Lingchuang".

Therefore, after the series was aired, Mango Super Media hit the 20% daily limit for two consecutive trading days, which is exactly the scenario that shareholders are most looking forward to.

As for the evaluations, they are mixed. Some viewers criticize its slow and dragging pacing, saying it is even worse than those AI short dramas on Douyin, while others praise its stunning scenes and special effects, and sigh that the development of AI is incredibly fast.

However, compared with whether the series is good to watch, what the X.PIN team cares more about is that Mango TV, which used to be busy making variety shows and idol dramas, has now also stepped into the AI industry.

Following the clues of Mango TV, we also investigated the other three long video platforms iQiyi, Tencent Video and Youku, and found that all these long video platforms have placed different levels of bets on AI.

First let's talk about iQiyi, which is the most radical one among them.

How bold is it?

It has put forward the slogan of "All in AI", and plans to transform iQiyi into a decentralized social media. In the words of its CEO Gong Yu, this is "a major transformation in iQiyi's 16-year history since its establishment".

The X.PIN team tried to understand this positioning, which is somewhat like turning iQiyi into a combination of Netflix and YouTube?

In the past, the content of long videos was mainly invested and produced by the platform itself, or purchased from film and television companies at a cost. With the arrival of AI, the content supply mode of iQiyi has the chance to be changed.

You may still remember that back in April, the AI artist library launched by iQiyi caused a huge public stir, and was heavily criticized by netizens at that time.

But putting aside this controversy, the AI artist library itself is actually just a small part of the puzzle of this transformation.

This year, iQiyi has focused on promoting Nado Pro, an AI film and television production platform, which has integrated nearly 70 intelligent agents related to film and television production. In addition, it also includes iQiyi's own IP, digital assets, and the aforementioned AI artist library.

After all, if you want to become a more creator-focused platform, simply hanging a "welcome" sign will not work at all.

In addition, creators can directly register for an iQiyi account to participate in the platform's content distribution and revenue sharing, and AIGC content can get an additional 20% subsidy before the end of this year.

In short, the platform has provided all the tools, resources, traffic and capital support.

A large number of creators have indeed been attracted. Since Nado Pro was put into commercial use in April, the number of active creators on it has exceeded 25,000, supporting more than 200 professional projects.

This time the X.PIN team talked with a creator. Lin Chuan (pseudonym) studied film in college and has traditional film shooting experience. He also participated in some venture capital events after graduation, but according to him, there are too few opportunities for new directors.

Being "selected" at film festivals including Golden Rooster, FIRST and Pingyao is regarded as the only way for new directors to get the opportunity to shoot feature-length films.

Lin Chuan's team's works have been shortlisted for many mainstream film festivals, but they only stopped at the shortlist stage.

Even if you win an award and get funding in the venture capital section, whether the project can be successfully launched and broadcast is still another uncertain matter.

"The industry is in a downturn, and film and television companies are even less willing to invest in new directors' works."

In the process of communication, we found that under the overall contraction of the traditional film and television industry, investors have become more cautious.

Now it is not even a problem that new directors cannot compete with senior practitioners. According to Lin Chuan, many film and television companies' own projects have poor box office performance, and the number of new projects that can be launched is getting smaller and smaller.

But the emergence of AI has opened a new gap.

Everyone is exploring how to make AI feature films. Past resumes and project experience are certainly helpful, but they are no longer the only bargaining chip.

Now if you want to make an AI feature film, you still need capital, manpower and capabilities, but the resources you need to mobilize are much less, so that people with good creative ideas can also get a chance to participate in the game.

New content forms and new evaluation systems are creating new opportunities for new entrants.

In fact, Lin Chuan came into contact with AI creation for the first time in April this year. He tried to make some 5-minute AI short films one after another during that period, but when he tried to make longer works, the cost of computing power and manpower rose rapidly again.

Two months ago, he tried to submit his script to iQiyi's AI feature film project, and unexpectedly he finally got selected.

After the film is selected, the platform will provide Nado Pro points and part of the labor support in the form of project investment for subsequent development and production.

All these inputs will eventually be reflected in the content of the platform.

Lin Chuan's film is still in the preparation stage, but earlier AI creations have actually been launched on iQiyi, such as *Tianwen*, *Misty Town*, *Guardian Game* and *The Snake Catcher's Tale*.

Screenshot of the AI film *Guardian Game*

Whether the film is good or not aside, it is very obvious what iQiyi is doing through this series of operations: In the past, making films was the job of professional production teams, but now they want more people to get a chance to participate, and maybe one day the platform will produce a hit AI drama.

Moreover, iQiyi is not the only platform that holds this idea.

Tencent Video and Mango TV are busy with their own respective businesses, but they have surprisingly consistent attitudes towards "making production tools".

iQiyi has Nado Pro in hand, Tencent Video launched WorkRally this year, and it is said that WorkSolo which focuses on AI short dramas is in the internal test stage quietly, and Mango TV also has its own Mango Lingchuang.

As for content supply, no matter making AI content by themselves, collecting AI content, or opening a separate channel for AI content and providing revenue sharing incentives, all long video platforms have regarded AI content as a new category worthy of investing resources.

We haven't mentioned Youku before, but it has not been idle either.

In June, HappyHorse cooperated with Orca Entertainment to hold the "HorsePower · AI Image Competition", and the winning works can be directly broadcast on Youku's film and television zone.

Around the same time, Youku also specially launched an AIGC web feature film incentive program, and the exclusive works can get up to 1.35 million yuan in rewards.

Moreover, this round of bets from long video platforms is no longer satisfied with those fast-food AI short dramas and comic dramas we watch on Douyin. This round of bets is obviously targeting AI long dramas.

*Later Journey to the West* is exactly the example.

In fact, back in April, Sun Zhonghuai, the chairman of Tencent Online Video, mentioned that Tencent Video will launch long video content produced by full-process AI, including more than a dozen episodes of TV series and a 90-minute film, which may be officially released in the third quarter of this year.

Calculating the time, it is probably coming in recent days.

Therefore, we will see more and more AIGC long dramas and films in the future.

But talking about this, the X.PIN team suddenly thought of one thing.

In the years before AI became popular, some dramas produced by long video platforms were already of poor quality in different ways. After using AI, can long dramas become better?

No one can guarantee this, but I think the long video industry may just reach the point where it badly needs AI.

Many people may not know how expensive it is for long video platforms to produce content.

Take iQiyi as an example. Its total revenue in 2025 was about 27.3 billion yuan, of which the content cost alone reached 15.45 billion yuan. In the second quarter of this year, the content cost of a single quarter was 3.82 billion yuan, while the revenue was 6.29 billion yuan.

If every drama becomes a hit after being broadcast, it will be fine. The problem is that before a drama is broadcast, no one can guarantee that the audience will like it, but capital and time must be invested in advance.

In fact, since 2022, long video platforms have been constantly talking about "reducing costs and increasing efficiency", and all platforms are thinking about how to make films that are both popular and cost-effective.

But if the only goal is to save money, there is no need to develop AI creation platforms and recruit AI creators at the same time.

Relying only on traditional long dramas, it is getting more and more difficult to retain users.

According to data from Yunhe, the effective broadcast volume of the top 20 new long dramas on the screen dominance list in 2025 was only 29.6 billion, a year