Interview with writer Liu Binli: AIGC allows more "Li Juan" to be seen
Recently, the first Chinese writer AIGC micro-fiction film "Eternal Life" was launched. The original work of "Eternal Life" is a micro-novel created by writer Liu Binli, published in "Tianchi Novel" in 2023, which depicts the story of the protagonist living alone in no man's space with the development of the immortal life system after the disappearance of the human world. The 5-minute micro-film generated by AIGC shows the life of the protagonist in a day in the immortal system, which not only examines the earth from a cosmic perspective, but also depicts the evolution of the deterioration of the earth's environment, and also depicts the lonely heart of the last human being, and the presentation effect is not inferior to the sci-fi blockbuster.
From micro-novels to micro-films, writer Liu Binli used AIGC for the first time to realize the video concretization of literary works, giving words a fresh life. This is not only a new attempt by China's AI industry in the field of literature, but also provides new possibilities for the commercialization of Chinese writers in the new form of communication. To this end, this magazine interviewed the writer Liu Binli and talked with him about the stories and thoughts behind his creation.
Q: Why did you come up with the idea of AIGC your work? As the first AIGC microfiction film in China, how does it connect the work of three different subjects: writers, shooting teams, and film and television companies?
Personally, I like to write microfiction and have already created a million-word work. Microfiction has been developing in China for decades and has its own place in the mainstream literary circle, and in the last decade, there have been many combinations of microfiction and micro-film. The micro-novel itself is a short and turbulent story, projected onto the movie, which can be a story synopsis or a scene part, which is the soul of the story, so from the micro-novel to the micro-movie, it itself has a continuous core.
Eight years ago, one of my short novels "Orphan" was adapted into a short film of the same name and won the Outstanding Film Award at the Asian Short Film Festival. At that time, I participated in the whole process of filming and production of the film, and realized that film and television dramas actually have a relatively high threshold in terms of resource planning, team ability, and cost investment. The literary works of ordinary writers have come to this point, and they need to have Bole, resources, and people who want to promote it, so that they can finally be presented to the public in the form of videos.
In addition to writing, I have also been engaged in the work of science and technology innovation education for young people, and participated in the establishment of artificial intelligence big data enterprises, and have always held a very positive attitude towards the industrial application of AI and the implementation of AIGC capabilities. In the past two years, the technology of Wensheng Wenwen, Wensheng video, and picture video has become more and more mature, which has also inspired me to realize the action of making my works cinematic through AIGC - it can be said that the development of technology is the best opportunity for the upgrading of literary and artistic forms.
I'm not the first to use microfiction to make movies and short plays, and in the past few years, a lot of people have tried to do this. But as far as I know, I should be the first, to be precise, the first writer to do so, using AIGC and AI tools to make micro-films.
Because of my work experience, I am probably the most tech-savvy writer circle, and my company happens to have such skills and capabilities, so I think I should take the lead in making something.
The scattered work that originally belonged to writers, screenwriters, directors, film and television companies, and distribution companies can be realized "one-stop" through the connection of technology, so that the stories in the writers' hearts can be concretely presented in front of the audience. Although the micro-film of "Eternal Life" is not perfect, I hope that everyone can see this new possibility.
Q: Why did you choose "Eternal Life" as a try?
"Eternal Life" is a science fiction novel, which discusses the end of human destiny and the continuation of living organisms under the rapid changes in the human living environment. Many of my works have predicted the possibility of long-term coexistence between humans, machines, and AI after the development and evolution of AI, and my works have also made some reflections on this.
On the one hand, it is the "immortality" of the human body and consciousness, and on the other hand, the AI invented by human beings is considered to have life in what sense, and the boundary may not be clear in getting along. AI, invented by humans, may survive forever and become the master of the new world.
Under such an assumption of the end times, the micro-film "Eternal Life" portrays the concept of the last human being on earth. I am very concerned about the topic of the "last one", and in many of my previous works, I have thought about this issue, for example, in "Kazakh in Transition", I told the story of the last Kazakh family, and the story of how they preserved the Kazakh tradition; In "The Old Man and the Horse", I portrayed the image of the last old man on the grassland who adhered to the traditions of the grassland people, and his farewell to the horse may be the last compromise between tradition and reality.
It's the same with "Eternal Life." I focus on the idea of the last human, as the last human being on Earth, living with infinitely powerful AI systems. Considering that I want to use AIGC to generate movies, I deliberately chose this theme, about the future, about imagination, about possibility, about the evolution of AI, maybe AIGC will play better than humans.
Q: What are your dissatisfaction with your current work?
First of all, because the starting point of creation is microfiction, which can only express a small aspect of complex emotions, I think it must be unfinished with adapting it into a movie, and the concentration and rhythm of the information are not enough.
Secondly, in terms of expressiveness, the image effect generated by AIGC is very magnificent, far better than the picture that readers can imagine by reading novels alone, but in terms of emotional expression, the emotions output by AI seem to be a little thin, not as rich as real human actors, which is also a common problem in AIGC videos at present: there is action but lack of emotion.
In addition, in terms of speech synthesis TTS, there is still huge room for improvement, and the machine sound can be heard, and our AIGC also needs to gradually realize its own "Ji Guanlin" effect to give people a stronger sense of substitution.
The significance of the first work is more about trying, and I hope that more writers, creators, and AIGC practitioners can participate in it and explore better full-link solutions.
Q: Is the diversification of media methods accelerating the decline of literature?
I don't agree with the idea of the "decline of literature." Literature has had different forms in different eras, and some people say that elite literature has now been replaced by popular literature, but I don't think it's accurate enough. Literature is meant to serve the public, and what people accept and love to watch, literature should evolve into a corresponding form. At the same time, the creators of literature are not necessarily elites. I think the biggest problem at the moment is that there are fewer things in literature that provoke human thinking, less things that shock the soul, and less criticism of society.
Those of us who are engaged in writing should think about how to bring out the good content of serious literature in a new form, rather than blindly lamenting the passage of time. When the media form evolves into the era of short video and technology develops into the era of AIGC, our literary works should use AIGC to efficiently evolve into a new form, so as to meet the reading habits and aesthetic requirements of the audience. At the same time, the changes in people's aesthetics of the humanistic world are gradually affecting the development of the literary world.
Recently, I have also seen that many film and television workers will return to literary works to find sources, such as this year's hit TV series "My Altay" adapted from Li Juan's short story collection. As mass entertainment moves from a hot mind to sober thinking, there will be more thought-provoking works of more critical value and meaning in serious literature.
However, Li Juan's Xinjiang series of literary works was published more than ten years ago, and it is a coincidence that it has only been noticed by commerce and the public this year, which also shows that the ability to disseminate purely words is decreasing. There are still many excellent "Li Juan" in China, and AIGC technology can help Chinese writers visualize, film and television their content, and be seen by more people in the new media environment. It also allows the Chinese people's entertainment consumption not only to "dominate literature", but also to provide rich literature.
Practitioners in the technology industry are trying to improve the value of AI in improving production efficiency, and what I want to do is that AI can bring profound changes in people's thinking and ethics. My original intention is to let the thinking and critical value of serious literature continue to release its vitality through the upgrading of technical means in the new media form.
Q: What do you think of the popular online short dramas? Is this form and content contrary to the intent of literature?
The emergence of short dramas is a very surprising thing, the large-scale online dramas produced by folk, various MCNs and video companies in recent years have actually greatly reduced the production threshold of the film and television industry, and at the same time, the publicity and distribution have been replaced by streaming, and the commercialization results are more direct, I am personally optimistic and supportive.
When it comes to "paradox", I think that in essence, online dramas and literature are of the same origin, but there are big differences in the form of presentation. The creation of short drama scripts pays attention to the concentration of conflict and the control of rhythm, but the pursuit of a sense of meaning is insufficient, which has also become the reason why some people criticize online dramas. Personally, I think that in these difficult times, it is okay to have more popular entertainment things, and everyone needs happy and relaxed things to withstand the years. But at the same time, I think there should also be serious works and critical works, and their roles are different.
There is a general belief in literary circles that tragedy and comedy are more enjoyable. In fact, the comedy that tragedy brings to the world will be even stronger, because everyone is immersed in the situation that tragedy creates more tragic than the world, and the pain of the world will also be forgotten, so the deep release that tragedy brings to people is even greater than comedy. I very much agree with this point of view, so while many people make content that is easy and entertaining, I, as a practitioner of technology, also call for some more artistic and thoughtful works.
Recently, I talked to some friends who are engaged in online dramas, and they are also actively promoting the quality of online dramas to achieve a two-way improvement in the number of users and content quality on their platform.
Q: What was the production process like from original fiction to short film? How will this standard/process serve the writer or creator community in the future?
The current creative process is not like a fool throwing a novel to the system, a beautiful movie is born, in fact, the whole process is created by human beings, and the role of people in it is to set specifications, put forward requirements, make adjustments based on goals, and achieve the effect by AI tools.
The first is to complete the adaptation of the original novel to the script through the way of Wenshengwen; Then, through the Wensheng diagram system, the creation of scripts to storyboard scripts is realized, and each storyboard script forms a beautiful picture; After having a storyboard script, the creation of a picture video is carried out to form a micro-film.
At present, the artificial intelligence industry in China is in the early stage of application explosion, various open source models and development tools emerge in an endless stream, and my team is also exploring AI application scenarios and capabilities.
At present, there are some writers who are communicating with me, wanting to make their works film and television through the means of AIGC, in fact, writers are also actively trying to integrate into new media forms and fields, but they lack tools and resources, and they have technical capabilities. I hope that through my cross-border experience, I can help China's most talented people grasp the opportunities brought by technology, build a new creative ecology, so that everyone can become a film and television person and distributor, so that more and better thinking and content can be seen.
Liu Binli has been deeply involved in the field of education for 23 years, and has served as the deputy general manager of New Oriental Smart Education, the general manager of New Oriental Online Digital Learning Division, and the assistant president of New Oriental. He has founded the famous youth science and technology education brand "Yule Bay" and the big data industry service brand "Science Paradise". In his spare time, he engaged in literary creation, published more than 1 million words of literary works, and published 6 novels such as "Returning to the East" and "South Coast of Houhai". He has won the first prize of the 2nd World Chinese Miniature Fiction Competition, the first prize of the China Miniature Fiction Competition, etc., and is a member of the Chinese Writers Association and the vice president of the Chinese Miniature Fiction Society.