Shulou(Shulou.com)06/03 Report--

Star "hair change", DeepNude automatically undress, repair the Republic of China beauty …... The popularity of these apps all shows that the tireless popularization of science by deep media and evangelists is not as good as entertainment when it comes to making the public aware of AI.

With the emergence of technologies such as natural semantic understanding, image recognition and video enhancement, the use of artificial intelligence to reproduce classic IP has suddenly become a trendy business.

Just like replacing the world classics with new binding, the old IP in the field of game animation, film and television has become the object of "being AI".

(the "returning pearl grid" restored by AI)

Not long ago, the restored version of "the Evangelical Warriors of the New Century" was launched on Netflix, and Chinese streaming platforms have launched their own restoration plans for old films, such as iqiyi's "Global Classic copy Restoration Program" and "Classic TV Series Digital Restoration Project", Youku's "Classic Film Restoration Plan", which is expected to launch 1000 old HD works.

The game has also ushered in a craze for remaking. Activision launched a remake of call of Duty 4 last year, and Blizzard, which has been refusing to reset, also launched a remake of StarCraft in the face. Japanese CAPCOM's classics such as biochemical Evil 2 are basically remade, and AI games can be traced back to 1989.

It seems that this AI reproduction wind will continue to blow for a while. Is it really a good business with rich mines buried as expected?

Nuggets Machine or Cold Rice and Hot stir-fry: the Perplexity behind IP Reproduction

How efficient is the reproduction of AI? the answer is that repairing videos is 500 times faster than manual work (public data from iqiyi's ZoomAI technology). It takes only an hour to repair a classic movie to 4K (data from Youku heterogeneous computing platform), and the whole process is so simple that you can finish a giant movie with one click.

Is it possible to make many excellent old games and film and television works rejuvenate again? Not only do you think so, but as you can see earlier, many companies have already done so.

However, if you want to think of it as a business, you have to think a little deeper.

First of all, the repair direction is more concentrated, it is difficult to pull away the advantage of differentiation. To know that AI reproduces the classic IP, the most common way is to improve the picture quality and picture understanding. As a result, various technologies are focused on sharpening, super-resolution, color enhancement and other technologies, which makes it difficult for film and TV platforms to open the experience gap in technology presentation, and ultimately can only rely on IP resources to compete.

The same is true of game reproduction. A series of manufacturers, such as CAPCOM and SE,HD, are not essentially different from the original. The technical barrier to this kind of reproduction is not high, and even fans can use love to generate electricity. Naturally, when they pile together, they will inevitably be labeled as "fried cold rice."

For example, vestan, a netizen of the ResetEra Forum, has enhanced the pictures of a number of old games after studying several papers on AI neural networks, including "biochemical crisis", "Mystery Island", "Galactic Warrior", "final Fantasy 7" and "doom" and so on.

(comparison of game quality repaired by players with AI)

The investment in conscience restructuring is not small, and the future of the business model is uncertain at present.

Using AI to revive the classic IP, one of the biggest advantages is high public awareness, it is easy to attract emotional fans, but also allows high-quality works to circle another wave of young fans for the platform and manufacturers. But the premise of all this is based on deep mining and innovation of the IP kernel, otherwise it is difficult to achieve drainage.

And more and more IP remake, the effect is also uneven, and with the "artificial intelligence" technology halo is increasingly thinning, the public's desire to try something new will also fade, and finally can attract the audience and players to repeat the aftertaste is still only a small part of the head IP.

For example, the original "Warcraft 3: the Frozen Throne", which was remade last year, has always been a blockbuster and the ancestor of many games. But if the king wants to come back, what needs to be changed is not only the rough portraits and environment rendering that do not match the current players' aesthetics, but also the re-interpretation and re-creation of the storyline, character character, game balance and so on.

(screenshot of the game "Warcraft 3: remaking")

Remake-style reproduction is more conscientious, but it also involves higher development costs, and it is also unknown whether new players will be able to pay for it after emotional fans have completed the "trip to this" sign-in.

So we see that the true story is much more complicated and difficult than advocating the repair of the traffic gold mine brought about by the classic IP. Manufacturers who only want to turn the picture into HD, rather than making efforts to continue the vitality of IP and expand their business model, should take a break.

AI remake plate, the real value at present is actually.

That being the case, why are so many manufacturers still flocking to it? The answer may lie in the endless imagination that AI, as a new revival means of classic IP, has brought to the industry in the early days, rather than making a quick profit from the market.

On the one hand, technology is becoming one of the core competitiveness of the entertainment industry, and these platforms have a certain accumulation in artificial intelligence. The form in which the technological advantage is exported to the public is itself a public relations problem. The technical term is too difficult for aunts to understand, so classic movies and TV dramas with a broad mass base have naturally become a very high-quality technical carrier.

While demonstrating the technological capabilities of enterprises, people with a relatively low proportion of payments can also be attracted to their own user pool. According to a person in charge of Youku, the number of broadcasts has increased by 450% since the launch of Alec Su's version of Heaven Sword and Dragon Sabre, which was restored in high definition.

On the other hand, the restoration of old film and television works is also a manifestation of the social responsibility of the platform. In the past, classic films can only be repaired and optimized manually, and the commercial return is not proportional to the cost, so many classic works and artistic creations are forced to be silent.

The support of the technology platform is very important to keep the pearl out of dust and keep rejuvenating in the eyes of the new generation of audiences.

For example, after iqiyi restored and enhanced the commentary work "the Great Heroes in troubled Times" by artist Shan Tianfang, this relatively minority artistic content soon attracted a lot of young audiences.

In addition, shaping a new IP is often not easy to succeed. By contrast, game manufacturers and streaming media platforms are rich in IP resources, and they are more technologically reproduced. It has been proved from many works that once the algorithm training is perfect, the marginal cost will be lower and lower, and the higher the repair effect is, it can almost be seen as a chain that lays out future entertainment. Therefore, in order to help enterprises hold the first-mover advantage in the 8K+5G+XR (augmented reality) period that pays attention to clarity, it is also worthwhile to reproduce hundreds of works as a kind of technical training.

It is also because of the above reasons, the achievement of today's AI renovation boom.

(4K version of "Sanmao wanderings" is released)

Of course, remaking is only a disguised development of the classic IP and cannot become the mainstream trend of the entertainment market. It is really unnecessary to advocate it too much. Its greater value lies in the positive promotion to the future. Therefore, it is more important to pay attention to the technical problems behind the reproduction phenomenon, rather than regard the classic IP as a large amount of money flow, if not careful, it is easy to fry.

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