Doubao disputes claim that half of AI compute goes to short dramas

Discussions about AI computing power allocation in China have drawn industry attention recently, with short dramas and video generation being called the biggest use of AI compute.

According to COL Digital's investor relations report, 55% of AI token consumption in China goes to short dramas and video generation, 24% to e-commerce ads, and only 15% to real research and development. Token use for these is now more than twice that of software development.

Doubao PR lead Liu Xing responded that the data is not reliable. He said only about 10% of ByteDance's total computing power is used for training and running video generation models.

China's National Radio and Television Administration says micro-dramas now have over 800 million users, with the market expected to top 100 billion yuan by 2025. The debate may push the industry to rethink how compute is used.