Kuaishou’s Kling AI platform generates video from text and still images.Nurphoto | Nurphoto | Getty ImagesBEIJING — China’s video-heavy entertainment world has yielded a trove of data for companies — and they’re now ramping up money-making artificial intelligence tools for generating ads and film clips.TikTok parent ByteDance holds the first and third spots in research firm Artificial Analysis’ top-ranked text-to-video generative AI models, which were launched in the last two months. Google holds the second and fourth spots, while Beijing-based short video app Kuaishou’s Kling AI ranks fifth.Despite some consolidation in other parts of the AI industry, “competition in AI video generation models is at an earlier stage, and some Chinese companies have emerged as early leaders in this space,” said Wei Xiong, China internet analyst at UBS Securities.”We believe AI video generation has the potential to reshape the content industry,” she said, “by enhancing production efficiency, lowering barriers to creation and unlocking new monetization models.”With such AI tools, users can upload a single image or multiple ones, and direct the AI to generate a video clip based on them. Other tools allow users to enter text, from which the AI will generate the video clip.More than 20,000 businesses from advertisers to movie animators already use Kling AI for generating video, the Beijing-based company claimed this week during the World AI Conference in Shanghai. The latest version, Kling 2.1, can automatically add relevant sound effects to match the AI-generated video.It’s not just for users in China.”Whether it’s user scale or commercial revenue, overseas accounts for the majority,” Zeng Yushen, head of operations at Kling AI, told CNBC in Mandarin, translated by CNBC. She said the company plans to enhance its support for the tool in places such as Japan, South Korea and Europe.”This is something we’ve observed, AI big models are increasingly globalized,” she said. “People don’t seem to care which country’s product it is.”Kuaishou claimed Kling AI made over 150 million yuan ($20.83 million) in revenue in the first three months of the year, and that daily advertising spend on generative AI tools was 30 million yuan during that time. The company has yet t …
