Hengdian's 230 Million Yuan AI Platform Partners with ByteDance: Where Does the Controversy Over 150,000 Extras' Data Come From?

When the spring river warms, the ducks are the first to know—and when it comes to a concrete reference point for the current state of the film and television industry, Hengdian World Studios is always the topic that cannot be avoided.

On October 28, #HengdianPartnersWithByteDanceToFeed150000ExtrasToAI# trended on Weibo; on the same day, the person in charge of public relations for Doubao responded, stating directly that the claim was seriously inaccurate. The topic did not die down because of this: how Hengdian ensures that large numbers of extras are informed and give authorization, how the boundaries of authorized use are defined, and whether the living space of extras will be squeezed as a result—these questions and anxieties are still fermenting.

Broadening the perspective reveals that film and television studios across the country are undergoing digital transformation, and the use of AI actors has already been implemented. Can the dividends brought by AI technological upgrades benefit the bottom of the industry? Can the supporting systems for the authorization and reuse of digital likenesses keep up with the pace of AI technological iteration?

Hengdian spends 230 million yuan to build an AI platform

In just a few years, Hengdian has gone through several stages: the sudden shutdown during the pandemic, the explosive wave of vertical-screen micro-dramas, and then the contraction of live-action film and television and the surge of AI content, witnessing the dramatic changes in the industry's content ecosystem. Since the first half of this year, the overall cooling of Hengdian has become more intuitive: "Hengpiao" extras dispersed because there was less work and less money, film and television companies have been cutting production and staff, and surrounding businesses have either closed down or changed trades.

From Hengdian becoming "Vertical Studio," from film and television shooting to tourist experiences, Hengdian's transformation for survival has always been a focus of attention.

Regarding Hengdian's previous transformation, netizens merely watched it for fun.

Since 2024, Hengdian has launched vertical-screen tourist short drama products aimed mainly at group customers. Until this summer, videos of filming experiences went viral on social media platforms, and Hengdian seized the opportunity to launch a solo project: tourists can spend two or three hundred yuan to indulge in an acting experience, and also enjoy professional crew services and immersive NPC interaction. Whether this self-rescue path integrating film and tourism becomes a second growth curve has not yet been verified, but at least it has attracted a wave of curious tourists and achieved spontaneous dissemination by consumers.

On October 13, the bid-winning announcement for the "Hengdian Film and Television AI Service Platform Construction Project" showed that the winning bid amount was 230 million yuan, of which the computing power leasing resource quotation was 27 million yuan, and the remaining quotation was 203 million yuan. The lead supplier is Dongyang Deep Space Engine (a ByteDance-affiliated company), and the bidding consortium also includes Beijing Volcano Engine Technology.

On October 23, at the 2026 Hengdian Film and Television Culture Industry Development Conference, Hengdian announced two important developments: the first is unprecedented support dividends, including all filming scenes within scenic areas being free of charge and all rents for more than 130 studios being waived, to attract production crews back to Hengdian.

The second is reaching cooperation with ByteDance's Volcano Engine to launch the heavyweight "Hengdian π" AI platform. The platform is positioned as public digital infrastructure for the film and television industry, with a focus on transforming assets such as Hengdian's real-scene bases and extras data into high-quality datasets to help production crews improve production efficiency while lowering the threshold for small and medium-sized film and television enterprises to use AI.

This is not the first cooperation between Hengdian and ByteDance; the two sides had already joined hands when Hengdian first began its digital transformation.

In 2021, Hengdian teamed up with Volcano Engine and Jiahuan Technology to jointly develop the "Hengdian Film and Television Culture Industry Brain," providing production crews with one-stop support including script analysis, actor placement, crew location scouting, film and television shooting, and financial settlement. By October 2025, Hengdian upgraded and launched the "Hengdian Film and Television Large Model" on that basis, covering the entire process of creation, shooting, production, and promotion; it also simultaneously put into operation the "AI Film and Television Ecology and Service Operations Center."

It is worth mentioning that at the 2025 Hengdian Film and Television Culture Industry Development Conference, the local public security organ officially released the film and television copyright crime monitoring and early warning model "Shadow Hunter," adding a technological line of defense to Hengdian's copyright protection.

However, this step taken by Hengdian in rights protection mainly applies to film and television works and has not yet covered individual actors. The starting point of this controversy lies in the individual rights and interests of the 150,000 extras, as well as what responsibilities Hengdian and ByteDance each need to bear.

Within a few hours of the topic trending, ByteDance responded swiftly. Liu Xing, the person in charge of public relations for Doubao, said: "Volcano Engine is the technical support party in this project, and all data assets belong to Hengdian or the authorizing parties. This project involves the use of anyone's likeness and voice, and authorization from the person concerned is definitely required. The data in this project will also not be used to train ByteDance large models."

Guduo also reviewed the tender document and found that in the provisions on extras data collection and intellectual property ownership, it clearly states that all datasets are lawful and compliant results.

The voices of doubt have not stopped, but this psychology is not difficult to understand. In recent years, the fact that Hengdian extras have had no work to shoot has attracted widespread attention, and combined with cases in which ordinary people have difficulty defending their rights after their faces are "stolen," this cooperation is easily interpreted as "distilling" extras.

And the questions netizens are more puzzled about, such as how Hengdian will obtain likeness authorization from 150,000 people, or at least from a large-scale population, and details such as how the scope of authorization will be delineated and how authorization fees will be specified, still have not received clear answers.

Setting aside the parts of the controversy that have not yet been clarified, Hengdian's transformation can be summarized as follows: it takes real-scene locations, studio leasing, and surrounding industrial clusters as its foundation, and accelerates digitalization at a time when AI is impacting live-action production capacity. On the one hand, it tries to stabilize the production crews' base with free policies; on the other hand, it builds an AI platform to transform the industry data and operational experience accumulated in the past into reusable digital assets, attempting to form a new competitive barrier.

Qingdao Oriental Movie Metropolis has taken the route of "heavy assets + introduction of high-end technology." As a film city invested in by Wanda with a total investment of 50 billion yuan, it possesses top-tier equipment including China's first virtual film production platform, the ultra-high-precision facial scanning system "Dome Light Field," an underwater production center, and an LED virtual shooting system. The "The Wandering Earth" series and the "Creation of the Gods" series were both filmed here, and the Middle Eastern town in "Welcome to the Dragon Restaurant" was also built here.

Worth mentioning is the "Dome Light Field": an actor only needs to face a scanning array composed of 150 cameras to generate a digital human likeness that supports face-swapping and age reduction.

Ningbo Xiangshan Film and Television City, by contrast, is a typical example of "film-tourism integration + technology empowerment." A scenic area still shooting scenes during the day turns into a consumption space for tourists' night tours in the evening; in collaboration with hit drama series, Xiangshan Film and Television City has also launched celebrity support activities, using film and television content and the fan economy to drive traffic to local cultural tourism.

Starting last year, Xiangshan Film and Television City has deeply applied AI technology to early-stage creation such as script generation and scene construction, and innovated mechanisms such as cross-project reuse of performers and crew logistics personnel and shared access to digital assets. At the same time, Xiangshan Film and Television City has scanned the local mountain and sea landscapes, and its accumulated more than 2,500 digital assets provide real-scene materials for science fiction creation.

Chengdu Film and Television City first entered the "service-matching digital platform" segment. In March 2024, Chengdu Film and Television City launched the "Shoot in Chengdu" one-stop service platform, integrating resources across the city such as shooting locations, crew hotels, and costume, makeup, and prop companies. In April 2026, the Chengdu Digital-Intelligent Studio Park opened, with virtual studios and motion capture studios launched simultaneously; local wonders such as Jiuzhaigou and Gongga Mountain have already completed digital collection, so crews only need to call up digital assets for scene construction.

In addition, newcomers that have emerged amid the AI wave are also worth attention, and Zhejiang Deqing Moganshan AI Film and Television City is one example. It was only officially launched in September 2022; although it has no accumulated foundation in live-action shooting, relying on policy support, the talent advantages of universities in the park, and the technological advantages of high-tech enterprises such as Bocai Media, it has already built an AI virtual film and television base, including the world's largest single LED virtual studio and a computing power center. According to staff at the film city, a single studio can shoot an entire film, saving 85% of scene construction costs.

Looking across these cases, it can be found that although the transformations of the various film and television cities differ slightly, their direction can be broadly summarized as follows: using technological upgrades to improve production efficiency, expanding the ways physical scenes are used, and redefining their own industry roles against the backdrop of industrial restructuring.

What makes Hengdian different is that it is one of the few film and television cities that explicitly aims to transform extras' manpower into digital assets, and therefore it is the first to run into portrait rights and infringement disputes. Beyond the short-term controversy, Hengdian also faces a longer-term test: during the painful period of industry transformation, can it rely on AI to get through?

Looking back at Hengdian's thirty years of development, the full-industry-chain ecosystem built on heavy assets has always been an advantage that other film and television cities find hard to match. During the industry's upcycle and the explosion of live-action micro-dramas, Hengdian relied on this ecosystem to absorb surging production demand, until long-drama production capacity contracted and AI micro-dramas erupted in concentrated fashion.

Data shows that in the first half of this year, Hengdian averaged 22.75 crews shooting per week, down 24.84% year on year, and the studio vacancy rate at one point approached 80%. During this period, Hengdian optimized its tourist experience filming programs; from January to May, inbound tourism to Hengdian surged 455% year on year, attempting to use C-end revenue to make up for the continued decline in B-end revenue. But such experience consumption is one-time consumption, with a repurchase rate of less than 3%, and in terms of revenue volume it can never compare with the crew economy.

In horizontal comparison, Hengdian also has shortcomings: in areas such as technical visual effects and virtual shooting, there is a gap between it and the self-built industrialized system of Qingdao Oriental Movie Metropolis. In terms of talent reserves, Hengdian is dominated by extras and basic trades, while high-tech talent basically comes from externally introduced partners, lacking the dense collaborative network of Beijing and Shanghai.

First, "Hengdian π" includes a full-modality dataset of original IP digital performers, which can generate digital performers for use in multiple scenarios.

Second, the platform includes a "topic inspiration" function that supports access to trend data across the entire internet such as short-drama play volume, popularity, retention, and interaction, and also supports heat analysis of hit themes to help authors determine creative directions.

Third, it launches a film and television app mobile client centered on short dramas, including ad-supported free viewing and paid on-demand functions.

In addition, will the surrounding industrial clusters and extras deeply tied to Hengdian have to bear the cost of the AI transformation? The better the platform works, the stronger the tendency of crews to "generate rather than shoot live," and by then platform revenue may rise, but the supporting industrial ecosystem may continue to shrink.

Since the second half of this year, leading platforms and producers have been actively laying out "AI + live-action" content, and there is no shortage of well-known IPs using this model to launch previous works.

The industry already has this demand, so what Hengdian needs to do is push "virtual-real complementarity": incorporate a project's live-action shooting and AI production into the same production process to reduce the friction costs of connecting the two models; build a bridge for crew talent to move into AI production, and transform the judgment they have accumulated on set into execution standards for AI.

This article comes from the WeChat public account "Guduo Network Film and Television" (ID: guduowlj), author: Lü Xiaoman, published with authorization from 36Kr.