---
title: "Unique Friends | Yuemo Studio's Long Yitong: How Can AI Open the Door to the Content Industry's Next Era?"
author: "Unique Research"
sourcePublication: "Unique Research Substack"
originalPublishedAt: "2025-11-10T12:00:32+00:00"
canonical: "https://ffcap.cn/en/research/src-20251110-03html"
source: "https://uniqueresearch.substack.com/p/src-20251110-03html"
language: "en"
---

# Unique Friends | Yuemo Studio's Long Yitong: How Can AI Open the Door to the Content Industry's Next Era?

_Original · Unique Research · 2025-11-10_

Editorial note: This is a complete English edition of the historical article and interview. View totals, creator-program rankings, claims of being the first, and assessments of technology and commercial prospects reflect the source’s reporting and the interviewee’s statements, not independently verified current results. The source does not define the scope of its “China’s first” claim. Chen Kun is identified only as the director named in the source; no identification with any other person of the same name is implied.

In a studio at the Central Academy of Fine Arts, a senior student is using several computers to accomplish something extraordinary: she and her small team are producing film and television projects that once required dozens of people and months of work. This is not a scene from science fiction, but a reality unfolding now. Long Yitong and her Yuemo Studio stand at the forefront of this creator revolution.

The Collapse from "Imagine" to "See"

When Long Yitong defines herself with three labels—"fearless adventurer, student entrepreneur, and beautiful young woman"—you might dismiss them as youthful self-expression. Look more closely, however, and those labels conceal a deeper question: in the age of AI, where do the boundaries of an individual's potential lie?

The traditional film and television industry has a rigorous division of labor. Turning an idea into images requires screenwriters to write the script, a director to control the pacing, art designers to shape the visuals, a camera crew to shoot, and a post-production team to edit and composite. It is a long production chain in which every stage requires specialists backed by years of training and accumulated experience. This system safeguards quality, but it also creates barriers: without sufficient resources and a team, your idea can go no further than your imagination.

AI has completely changed those rules. The fantasy short drama Shanhai Qijing: Pibo Zhanlang, on which Long Yitong worked, surpassed 50 million views across the internet and was China's first AIGC fantasy short drama. More notably, its concept-art team was not a conventional production group of dozens, but a lean small team. Text models helped build the story framework, image models turned imagination into concrete pictures, and video models completed the final presentation. The time from the first spark of an idea to a finished film was compressed to a degree once unimaginable.

This collapse in the time between "imagine" and "see" brings more than an efficiency gain. At a fundamental level, it redefines creation itself: creation is no longer an accumulation of techniques, but a return to aesthetics, ideas, and expression in their purest forms. Once AI lowers the technical threshold, the things that truly differentiate creators are precisely those AI cannot replace—your aesthetic judgment, your narrative logic, and your distinctive understanding of the world.

A Decision Philosophy One Step Ahead of the Market

Long Yitong says that her decisions are always "one step ahead of the market." This is not a conclusion fashioned with hindsight, but a philosophy of decision-making worth examining.

She was among the earliest creators in China to experiment with AI video content, and one of the first nine super creators on the Jimeng platform. When AI image generation was at its hottest, she was already exploring AI video. When solo AI video creation took off, she had already assembled a professional team. By the time more professionals began pouring into AI short films, her team had already built a systematic operation, partnering with several art academies to train students and form a professional concept-art team for AI short dramas.

Behind this sense of timing is an accurate judgment about the path of technological evolution. Every technological breakthrough opens new use cases, and those who enter them first often capture the greatest rewards. But being "one step ahead" does not mean blindly chasing trends; it rests on a deep understanding of the technology's essence. Long Yitong saw not the iteration of a single tool, but a shift in the entire content-production paradigm.

More importantly, she understands a central principle: in a field where technology evolves rapidly, an individual's speed of learning and capacity to adapt are the greatest competitive advantages. Traditional film and television may require years to train a mature professional, while an AI tool may be superseded within months. In such an environment, the "adventurer" spirit—remaining open, learning quickly, and continually experimenting—becomes the safest strategy.

The Leverage Effect: Amplification, Not Replacement

Discussions about AI's value often fall into one of two extremes: either AI will replace human creators, or it merely improves efficiency. Long Yitong's practice reveals a third possibility: AI's greatest value lies in amplifying creators.

Her workflow looks like this: ChatGPT and DeepSeek for script planning; Jimeng and Midjourney mainly for image generation; and a combination of tools including Jimeng, Hailuo, Kling, Vidu, and Grok for video generation. This is not a simple pile of tools, but a carefully designed production pipeline. Each tool plays a role at a particular stage, together completing the journey from concept to finished work.

The key, however, is not how many tools are used, but how they are used. AI turns the creator from an "executor" into a "director." You need not draw every frame yourself, but you must design the logic of the whole narrative, its visual language, and the baseline of its style. This transition may sound simple, but it actually places higher demands on creators: they need the ability to control the whole, understand the logic of every creative stage, and make aesthetic judgments at the macro level.

Long Yitong's team currently has two main lines of business: it provides customized AI visual content for brands and project owners, and it participates in AI short-drama production as a concept-art team. It also offers knowledge services such as enterprise AI-application training and course sales. At the heart of this business model is not the sale of labor or time, but the sale of a capability—the ability to realize ideas with AI. The value of that capability will not decline as AI tools become widespread; instead, it will rise as demand grows.

What Kind of Creators Will Own the Future?

An important technological inflection point is approaching in AI short dramas. As generative technology matures, AI-assisted creation of high-quality long-form video is gradually becoming a reality. Market acceptance of AI content has increased significantly. With advantages including speed, imaginative range, and stylistic diversity, AI short dramas are poised to become a new content wave.

Yet mature technology does not mean less competition. On the contrary, it means competition will intensify. When everyone can use the same tools, the tools themselves cease to be a moat. The real moat is how you use them and what irreplicable qualities you put into your work.

Long Yitong believes the future belongs to creators who understand both aesthetics and technology. This is not a simple addition of skills, but the fusion of two ways of thinking. Understanding aesthetics means having the judgment to know what is good and valuable. Understanding technology means grasping a tool's possibilities and limitations, and being able to turn an idea into reality efficiently.

At a deeper level, creators must build their own methodological systems. AI tools will keep changing, but your creative system should remain stable. You need to understand the complete progression from text to image to video, master the precise expression of ideas through prompts, and know how to switch among and integrate different tools. These are not isolated skills, but one complete creative system.

Individuals also need brand awareness in the AI era. Content is only the starting point; personalized expression and the communication of values determine long-term influence. Long Yitong herself is a good example: she is not only a creator, but also an instructor and a super creator on several platforms. She is building not merely a body of work, but a recognizable identity as a creator.

The Renaissance of the Individual

In one sense, AI is bringing about a renaissance of the individual. During the Renaissance, Leonardo da Vinci could simultaneously be a painter, sculptor, architect, engineer, and scientist. Individual possibility seemed limitless because the boundaries of knowledge had not yet been divided so finely. As industrialization deepened, however, specialization became ever narrower, confining individuals' capabilities to increasingly restricted domains.

To some extent, AI restores the possibility of becoming a generalist. One person can be a screenwriter, director, cinematographer, editor, and producer, independently completing an entire creative project. This does not mean everyone can become Leonardo da Vinci. It means technology has lowered the barriers to cross-disciplinary creation, giving individuals the opportunity to exercise their talents across broader dimensions.

But this possibility comes at a price. It requires creators to keep learning, continually adapt to new tools and methods, and preserve the core of their creative identity amid rapid change. Long Yitong calls herself a "fearless adventurer," perhaps the most accurate definition of a creator in the AI era: you need the courage to try the unknown, the ability to master change, and the wisdom to remain true to what matters.

When one person becomes an army, the result is not only a revolution in productivity, but a revolution in the philosophy of creation. It prompts us to reconsider: what is the essence of creation? What is a creator's value? In an era when AI can generate everything, where does human meaning reside?

The answer may lie in Long Yitong's practice: AI will not replace creators; it will amplify them. It enables people with genuine ideas and the desire to express them to turn imagination into reality at lower cost and greater speed. It returns to the "individual" the leading role in creativity, productivity, and commercial value.

This is the best of times because individuals have never had so many possibilities open to them. It is also the most challenging of times because technological assistance does not automatically equal success; the real competition has only just begun. Those who distinguish themselves in this revolution will necessarily be the creators who understand the essence of technology, hold fast to their original creative purpose, and dare continually to surpass themselves.

Perhaps years from now, when we look back on this era, we will find that its significance lay not merely in how many new technologies it produced, but in how it redefined the very idea of the "individual." With AI, individuals for the first time possess capabilities approaching industrial-scale productivity and can fully express their own worlds in their own ways. This may be the revolution's most far-reaching significance.

Selected Interview Q&A

Q1: Please introduce yourself, define yourself with three "labels," and explain how you found and established your position in your segment of AI. What is the most significant trend in that field today?

Long Yitong: Fearless adventurer, student entrepreneur, and beautiful young woman.

Early in my career as an independent creator, I drew mainly on my background in art theory at the Central Academy of Fine Arts. I showed strong artistic expressiveness in prompt writing and visual conception, and my work attracted exceptional attention and traffic on online platforms. A visual style I designed was also used for the opening sequence of season 8 of The Chinese Restaurant.

Later, I founded my own team, Yuemo Studio. We position ourselves in the industry as an AI short-drama concept-art team with both strong aesthetics and technical capabilities.

The AI short-drama field is now reaching an important technological inflection point. As generative technology matures, AI-assisted creation of high-quality long-form video is gradually becoming a reality. The market's acceptance of AI content has increased significantly. With advantages including speed, imaginative range, and stylistic diversity, AI short dramas are poised to become a new content wave.

Q2: What opportunity first brought you to prominence among AI creators? What critical decision do you think you or your team got right?

Long Yitong: Perhaps it was our collaboration with director Chen Kun on China's first AIGC fantasy short drama, Shanhai Qijing: Pibo Zhanlang. It surpassed 50 million views across the internet, and many industry professionals came to know us as the concept-art team behind Shanhai.

I have always felt that my team's decisions stay one step ahead of the market. I was among China's earliest creators to experiment with AI video content, and one of the first nine super creators on the Jimeng platform. When AI image generation was at its hottest, I had already started exploring AI video creation. When solo AI video creation took off, I had already formed my own AI video team, which is precisely why director Chen Kun invited us to collaborate.

By the time more and more professionals began entering AI short films, our team had already taken the lead in establishing a systematic operation: we partnered in advance with several art academies, trained students, and assembled a professional concept-art team for AI short dramas.

Q3: Do you currently operate as a "super individual," a "one-person company," or a lean small team, such as 2–3 people? Why did you choose this model, and what distinctive advantages does it offer in the AI era?

Long Yitong: I currently create through a lean, small team. In the AI era, barriers between professions are rapidly breaking down—a small team of just a few people can now do work that once took dozens.

With text models, we can independently create scripts. With image models, we can quickly turn concepts in our minds into concrete pictures. With video models, we can complete content production at extremely low cost. AI makes the creative workflow more efficient: one person can take on several stages, reducing time lost in communication between disciplines while sharply lowering production costs, thereby improving both efficiency and creativity.

Q4: The theme of this conference is "Pioneering Intelligence | The Individual Era." As a benchmark practitioner of this era, what role does AI play in your daily workflow, and to what extent has it "liberated" you?

Long Yitong: In my daily creative work, AI is more like an implementer of ideas.

Text models help me turn vague concepts in my mind into concrete stories, while image models turn imagined fragments into visible pictures.

In this process, AI is no longer merely a tool. It frees people from complex technical operations and returns creation to its most essential level: aesthetics, ideas, and creativity are the true determinants of a work's quality.

Q5: Could you share your current "AI tool matrix," or that of your team?

Long Yitong:

For script planning, we use ChatGPT and DeepSeek more often.

For image generation, we mainly use Jimeng and Midjourney.

For video generation, we experiment with more tools and combine Jimeng, Hailuo, Kling, Vidu, Grok, and others.

Q6: How can a "super individual" achieve a closed commercial loop? Could you share your main monetization models, and what new possibilities for monetization has AI created for individual creators?

Long Yitong: Our business is divided mainly into commercial-project collaborations and AI short-drama production.

For commercial projects, we provide two kinds of services:

Customized content: tailored AI visual content and creative solutions for brands and project owners;

Model demo collaboration: co-creating demos and developing visual styles based on frontier AI models.

For short dramas, our team primarily serves as the concept-art team, generating production-ready assets for industrialized AI short-drama workflows and providing the visual foundation for high-quality short-form drama creation.

We have also expanded into knowledge services, including enterprise AI-application training, sales of course materials, and one-on-one instruction. These paid knowledge services help more creators master the core capabilities of AI content production.

Q7: For you, where is AI's greatest "leverage effect"—a 10-fold gain in efficiency, or the realization of ideas that were previously unimaginable? How do you think AI will redefine the creativity, productivity, and commercial value of the "individual"?

Long Yitong: For me, AI's greatest "leverage effect" is not merely improved efficiency, but the complete expansion of the boundaries of what ideas can be realized.

In the past, turning an idea from words into moving images often required a team of dozens collaborating for weeks or even months. Now, with AI, I can validate an idea, complete a script, generate visuals, and even produce a finished film in a short time.

This speed of moving from "imagine" to "see" brings not only a 10-fold improvement in efficiency, but an entirely new kind of creative freedom.

AI gives the "individual" capabilities approaching industrial-scale productivity for the first time.

It redefines a creator's boundaries, allowing one person to be screenwriter, director, cinematographer, editor, and producer.

As technology becomes widely available, the barriers to creation fall dramatically. What truly separates creators will no longer be resources and equipment, but the depth of their aesthetics, ideas, and expression.

I believe AI will not replace creators in the future; it will amplify them. It enables people with genuine ideas and the desire to express them to turn imagination into reality at lower cost and greater speed. It returns to the "individual" the leading role in creativity, productivity, and commercial value.

Q8: For those who also want to become AI creators, operate AI-focused media accounts, or build a "one-person company," where should individuals or small teams make preparations in advance—for example, in skills, tools, and ways of thinking?

Long Yitong: I believe the future belongs to creators who understand both aesthetics and technology.

For individuals or small teams that want to enter AI content, the most important thing is not to "chase the trend," but to establish their own methodological systems in advance. I see three directions that deserve particular focus:

First, skills:

AI creation is no longer about using a single tool, but about interdisciplinary integration. An excellent AI creator should possess three capabilities at once: visual art, narrative logic, and technological understanding. They should be able to write prompts, recognize the logic of a style, and understand how models work and produce outputs.

Second, tools:

Build your own "AI tool ecosystem." From text models to image and video models, and then to post-production and sound generation, every link should form part of a clear process. Tools keep changing, but your system must remain stable so that you can respond to the ever-changing wave of AI.

Third, mindset:

AI does not replace humans; it redistributes creativity. Creators need to move from an "executor mindset" to a "director mindset." You may not have to draw every frame yourself, but you must be able to design the logic of the entire narrative, its visual language, and the baseline of its style.

Individuals also need brand awareness. In the AI era, content is only the starting point; personalized expression and the communication of values determine long-term influence.

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