China’s ‘Netflix’ iQiyi pivots toward an aging population in an AI era
IQiyi, sometimes dubbed the “Netflix” of China, swung to a profit in 2023 for the first time since it listed in the U.S. in 2018.
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BEIJING — Chinese video streaming platform iQiyi is turning its attention to the country’s aging population, while using artificial intelligence tools to bolster content production.
One of iQiyi’s near-term goals is to improve the product offering for older users, CEO and founder Gong Yu said Tuesday at the company’s annual conference.
“It seems simple but it’s not, because in the past 10, 20 years the motto has been to serve young people, and not be traditional,” he said in Mandarin, translated by CNBC.
He noted how users in their 40s or older are dropping off because increased screen time is accelerating eyesight deterioration, and it’s harder for them to read small text. Gong also pointed to estimates that predict about one-fourth of China’s population will be considered elderly in 2033, rising to one-third in 2053.
China is rapidly aging as fewer people have children and lifespans increase. Births have fallen despite Beijing’s efforts in the last decade to unwind restrictions on households for one child each.
Fewer children, Gong said, means each child becomes more important. He said iQiyi would improve the quality of its content for children.
IQiyi is also tapping artificial intelligence tools for making content production more efficient.
Liu Wenfeng, iQiyi’s chief technology officer, gave a speech at the Tuesday conference about “embracing AI.” He showed off the company’s tools for quickly imitating a multi-camera shot in a virtual environment, and described how the virtually created elements from clothes to buildings could be re-used or commercialized in a future metaverse.
Liu also said iQiyi’s AI tools can significantly reduce the time spent analyzing novels for production-worthy stories, as well as detect which parts of existing dramas bore or interest viewers.
Tuesday morning’s presentations included a clip from OpenAI’s Sora text-to-video promotional video, but iQiyi executives did not share whether they had similar technology at scale.
Instead, Liu emphasized how generative AI allows more people to be creators, and that the scarcest attribute would then be excellent creativity and superior aesthetics.
IQiyi cannot publicly share more details about its AI capabilities due to confidentiality, but creators who partner with the company can learn more, founder Gong said.
Looking ahead, he said the company would also look to tap opportunities in overseas markets as growth in China moderates.
IQiyi in late February reported it swung to a profit in 2023 for the first time since it listed in the U.S. in 2018. For nearly every year since, the company posted annual losses of $1 billion or more.
The company is next due to release quarterly results on May 16.
In late February, iQiyi CFO Wang Jun told CNBC in an exclusive interview he is “excited” about potential new business opportunities with the emergence of OpenAI’s text-to-video tool Sora.
He said such tools can help iQiyi tell stories more creatively, and that internally, it is exploring the text-to-video space though it is not working with Sora.
For 2023, iQiyi said its original content accounted for a record 65% of major dramas it released.
The company claims it now has more than 50 in-house studios that produce more than 200 shows a year.
The growth of in-house production reflects a bigger change in China’s film industry over the last five years, Wang said, noting that previously the majority of content was made by third parties, resulting in bidding wars for shows which raised costs.
Other major Chinese video platforms with longer-form content include Tencent Video, Alibaba-owned Youku and Bilibili.
Microsoft Chairman and CEO Satya Nadella speaks during the Microsoft May 20 Briefing event at Microsoft in Redmond, Washington, on May 20, 2024. Nadella unveiled a new category of PC on Monday that features generative artificial intelligence tools built directly into Windows, the company’s world leading operating system.
Jason Redmond | AFP | Getty Images
Microsoft on Wednesday announced a tier of its Copilot assistant for corporate users with a consumption-based pricing model. The new Microsoft 365 Copilot Chat option represents an alternative to the Microsoft 365 Copilot, which organizations have been able to pay for based on the number of employees with access to it.
The introduction shows Microsoft’s determination to popularize generative artificial intelligence software in the workplace. Several companies have adopted the Microsoft 365 Copilot since it became available for $30 per person per month in November 2023, but one group of analysts recently characterized the product push as “slow/underwhelming.”
Copilot Chat can be an on-ramp to Microsoft 365 Copilot, with a lower barrier to entry, Jared Spataro, Microsoft’s chief marketing officer for AI at work, said in a CNBC interview this week. Both offerings rely on artificial intelligence models from Microsoft-backed OpenAI.
Copilot Chat can fetch information from the web and summarize text in uploaded documents, and people using it can create agents that perform tasks in the background. It can enrich answers with information from customers’ files and third-party sources.
Unlike Microsoft 365 Copilot, Copilot Chat can’t be found in Office applications such as Word and Excel. People can reach Copilot Chat starting today in the Microsoft 365 Copilot app for Windows, Android and iOS. The app is formerly known as Microsoft 365 (Office). It’s also available from the web at m365copilot.com, a spokesperson said.
Some management teams have resisted paying Microsoft to give the 365 Copilot to thousands of employees because they weren’t sure how helpful it would be at the $30 monthly price. Costs will vary for the Copilot Chat depending on what employees do with it, but at least organizations won’t end up paying for nonuse.
“As one customer said to me, this model lets the business value prove itself,” Spataro said.
Microsoft tallies up charges for Copilot Chat based on the tally of “messages” that a client uses. Each “message” costs a penny, according to a blog post. Responses that draw on the client’s proprietary files cost 30 “messages” each. Every action that an agent takes on behalf of employees costs 25 “messages.”
“We’re talking a cent, 2 cents, 30 cents, and that is a very easy way for people to get started,” Spataro said.
Salesforce charges $2 per conversation for its Agentforce AI chat service, where employees can set up automated sales and customer service processes.
The number of people using Microsoft 365 Copilot every day more than doubled quarter over quarter, CEO Satya Nadella said in October, although he did not disclose how many were using it. But sign-ups have been mounting. UBS said in October that it had 50,000 Microsoft 365 Copilot licenses, and in November, Accenture committed to having 200,000 users of the tool.
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