An AI-generated video titled “Jia Zhangke Wishes Everyone Happy New Year” has surfaced online and is also circulating widely across social media, featuring a digital recreation of the acclaimed Chinese filmmaker in a scripted, meta-fictional exchange about authorship, technology and artistic control.
The short clip, posted on YouTube by COMA — the Chinatown Organization for Media Awakening — depicts director Jia Zhangke encountering an AI version of himself, leading to a conversation that blends humor with philosophical commentary on filmmaking in the age of artificial intelligence. The video description states: “We collaborated with director Jia Zhangke on a short film, Seedance 2.0, for the Lunar New Year.”
It is not immediately clear whether Jia himself was involved in the making of the clip or participated in its production. Variety has reached out to the filmmaker for comment.
In the short film, the interaction begins with Jia expressing surprise at finding himself replaced by an AI double during a shoot. The synthetic version explains that it has enhanced his appearance by removing wrinkles and reducing his weight, prompting the director to joke that he wants the missing pounds restored because the altered version looks awkward.
The two then debate whether the AI should be considered a creative work or merely a high-quality imitation. To demonstrate its capabilities, the AI visually transports Jia through a series of shifting cinematic landscapes, placing the director inside stylized environments that evoke the visual worlds associated with his films.
A central conflict emerges when the AI inserts an optimistic line about looking toward a new era, which Jia objects to, saying his characters have never spoken in such terms. The AI counters that once a work reaches audiences, its interpretation no longer belongs solely to its creator.
The conversation also explores the prospect of human-AI collaboration, with the AI proposing a division of labor in which the filmmaker provides ideas while the machine supplies computational power. Jia responds with a joke about his lifelong dislike of “Party A” – Chinese industry slang for clients – leading to a punchline about becoming what one once opposed.
The film ultimately reveals the entire scenario to be a staged performance, with actors discussing the difficulty of portraying Jia Zhangke and suggesting that embodying the director is less about physical likeness than capturing a particular mental state. The video ends with both Jia and his AI counterpart delivering a Lunar New Year greeting.
The project appears tied to Seedance 2.0, ByteDance’s AI video-generation model capable of producing cinematic clips from text, image and audio inputs while maintaining character consistency across scenes. The technology has drawn growing attention across the global film industry alongside criticism from studios and trade groups over alleged copyright violations and unauthorized use of intellectual property and performer likenesses.
Jia has previously spoken about artificial intelligence’s role in filmmaking. During a Venice Film Festival masterclass last year, he said: “AI feels like playing chess at home, while shooting with a camera is like climbing a mountain outdoors. Different directors will choose different tools, but I’m still drawn to the camera and the real world.”
Best known for socially grounded works including “Still Life” and “A Touch of Sin,” Jia has long explored the social and technological transformations of contemporary China.
Whether the newly circulating video represents an official collaboration tied to Seedance 2.0, a promotional demonstration or an independently produced AI experiment remains unresolved.