---
title: "Unique Friends | Shuimu Intelligence’s Zhou Zhipeng: Let Everyone Experience the Beauty of Design"
author: "Unique Research"
sourcePublication: "Unique Research Substack"
originalPublishedAt: "2025-11-04T09:01:00+00:00"
canonical: "https://ffcap.cn/en/research/unique-research-2025-11-04-02"
source: "https://uniqueresearch.substack.com/p/unique-research-2025-11-04-02"
language: "en"
---

# Unique Friends | Shuimu Intelligence’s Zhou Zhipeng: Let Everyone Experience the Beauty of Design

_Original · Unique Research · 2025-11-04_

_Editor’s note: This complete English edition preserves the original report’s commentary and Zhou Zhipeng’s statements. Company credentials, investors, usage figures, performance and market claims are attributed to the source and interviewee, not independently audited findings. Shuimu Intelligence and Chushou AI are transliterations of the Chinese names, not assertions of official English branding. The source describes Sorajima as a leading Japanese short-drama company; that description is retained as the interviewee’s characterization. No publication city is inferred._

In this age of surging intelligence, discussions of AI often slip unconsciously into a reverence for efficiency, algorithms, and computing power. But step into the world of Zhou Zhipeng, co-founder of Shuimu Intelligence, and you will find an entirely different path: he is not using AI to replace people; he is redefining where people belong.

The purpose of technology is not to make people disappear, but to make them more fully human

Comics and comic dramas—an industry historically dependent on labor, aesthetic judgment, and craft—have long been trapped by high costs, long production cycles, and inconsistent finished work. Zhou Zhipeng, however, did not rush to use AI to squeeze out the remaining value. Instead, he used AI to restore a question that is often overlooked: what should creators truly be doing?

In the past, lead artists exhausted their passion in an endless cycle of “refined roughs–polished drafts–line art,” while assistants could spend an entire career repeatedly drawing the same kind of background. That is not creation; it is compulsory mechanical labor. The design logic of Chushou AI is to return lead artists to “telling a good story.” They need only complete the storyboards and initial design settings; everything else—backgrounds, refinement, character poses—can be filled in by AI. Assistants who once occupied the margins can now also work independently of a lead artist, using the tools to complete their own work.

This is not AI replacing humanity, but AI allowing people to return to their essence. Creativity is a form of human dignity, not a war of attrition.

Behind the MAS system: a group of “invisible” AI collaborators

When we talk about AI creation, we often imagine an all-purpose engine: one-click generation and automatic scriptwriting. Zhou Zhipeng says this is a misunderstanding. A genuinely powerful creative system—such as the MAS system behind Chushou AI—is more like an “expert squad” composed of more than two hundred AI Agents. Some condense novels; some identify plot points; others develop characters, describe props, expand story beats, or generate AI visuals. A “commander” Agent coordinates the whole operation. This is not “single-point intelligence,” but an AI brain trust built on a division of labor and collaboration.

You are no longer facing a “black-box” large model. Instead, like a director, you can deploy a “virtual production crew.” Every Agent knows its responsibility, while the human plays the “executive director” with final judgment and creative inspiration.

AI does not alienate individuals; it empowers each person to have a team of intelligent digital counterparts.

The “one-person company” is not a dream, but a trend

A high-school student, a civil servant, or even a 50-year-old man who has never picked up a brush can now use a single creative sentence and just 90 seconds to publish a comic-drama work on a global platform. The underlying logic of Chushou AI is not to train “AI artists,” but to let “everyone become an artist.”

We have seen too many slogans about “decentralization” betrayed by the tools themselves. Zhou Zhipeng’s logic is different: “Let AI be the cog, and let people become the source of creativity again.” Technology is not the goal; restoring the right to create is the end state.

Shuimu Intelligence has also faced intense resistance and skepticism in major comics markets such as Japan and South Korea. Beneath that skepticism, however, the company found a new audience quietly emerging: “general entertainment users” who do not have time to follow long-form series and are not constrained by professional barriers. They do not demand perfect brushwork; they want strong stories, a fast pace, and high conflict. This is a window of opportunity for AI and creators together.

For platforms, meanwhile, short-form, high-frequency, breakout-ready UGC/PUGC content will be the new engine in the battle for future traffic. Whoever masters the methodology for creating AI-generated content will possess a content mine that never runs dry.

The destination of AI is to restart the definition of the “human”

In Zhou Zhipeng’s telling, “Creating Intelligence | The Individual Era” is no longer a slogan but a philosophy of action. He is not building a tower for AI; he is dismantling the walls around the creative industries.

You can be a one-person company or the executive director of a virtual studio. You do not need masterful technique to move tens of millions of people with a story. You do not need to understand screenwriting to have an AI writing team of your own.

His vision of the future is not about replacing or being replaced, but about coordination and a new division of labor: people focus on expression while AI handles execution; people provide inspiration while AI realizes the world; people control how value is distributed while AI enables scale.

This future is not in a distant Silicon Valley laboratory. It is quietly taking shape at desks piled with comics in Hangzhou and within every ordinary person who picks up a phone and opens Chushou AI.

So when we talk about AI, perhaps we should pause and ask: what kind of “human” do we want to become? A cog on an assembly line, assimilated by the tools, or a free individual equipped with intelligent assistants and able to focus on creativity?

Through his work, Zhou Zhipeng offers a deeply moving answer.

Selected Interview Q&A

Q1: Mr. Zhou, hello. We hear that Shuimu Intelligence is attracting a great deal of attention. Could you briefly introduce yourself and the company? How did you begin working in AIGC (AI-generated content)?

Zhou Zhipeng: Hello, everyone. I am Zhou Zhipeng. I am a veteran of the LKK Design Group and a co-founder of Shuimu Intelligence. Today I am primarily responsible for the company’s “comic drama” business.

Shuimu Intelligence was founded at the end of 2020 and incubated within LKK Group, a national-level design center. Our main platform is called “Chushou AI,” and our goal is to build it into the world’s leading interactive consumption platform for AI comic dramas. We are recognized as a national high-tech enterprise, a specialized and innovative small or medium-sized enterprise in Zhejiang Province, and a Hangzhou Eagle Plan company. We have also been reported by CCTV, Xinhua News Agency, Xuexi Qiangguo, Zhejiang TV, and Hangzhou TV as a benchmark for new quality productive forces in culture. Our investors include Sequoia, Hillhouse, and Baidu Strategic Investment.

Q2: Your flagship product, “Chushou AI,” sounds fascinating. What exactly does it do? Is it for professionals, or can ordinary people use it too?

Zhou Zhipeng: That gets straight to the point. “Chushou AI” actually has two parts:

One is for professionals—the B2B side—and is called the “A-grade comics and comic-drama tool.” We use what we describe as the world’s first “autonomous decision-making agent cluster”—you can think of it as many AI assistants working together—covering the full process from IP adaptation and comic creation to comic-drama production. We have 32 vertical models, including Japanese, Korean, and Chinese comic styles, as well as 1,800 character, scene, and related models. The platform also offers extensive creative assets, including 200,000 LoRA models (20 × 10,000) and a library of 150,000 dynamic poses (15 × 10,000), among others.

The other part is for ordinary users—the UGC side. It is extremely simple: enter a creative idea in a single sentence, and within 90 seconds it automatically generates a storyboard script, a comic, or even a comic drama. More than three million creators from over 60 countries now use the tool.

Q3: How does “Chushou AI” perform in practice? We hear that many works have already been released. What do the data show?

Zhou Zhipeng: Our tools and workflow have already produced more than 1,000 comic chapters and more than 1,000 comic-drama episodes, all of which have been released. Together they have accumulated 1.4 billion reads and views, with combined viewing time reaching 100 billion seconds.

Crucially, these works compete directly with traditionally produced work by human creators on major platforms such as Tencent and Douyin, and they consistently rank near the top of the charts. This proves that the quality of AI-produced content is robust.

Q4: Has AI substantially changed how the traditional comics industry works—for example, the role of the “lead artist”?

Zhou Zhipeng: The change is enormous. In the past, lead artists were exhausted. They had to draw refined roughs and basic roughs while also managing many later stages.

Now we return lead artists to the core of creation: focusing on telling a good story. They need only draw strong “storyboards,” which determine character performance and cinematic language, and establish the early “design settings,” such as one or two images that define the style. Tedious tasks such as line art, coloring, and backgrounds can be left to models and AI tools. This frees the lead artist’s energy to refine the story.

Q5: What about comics “assistants”? Is AI taking their jobs, or creating new opportunities?

Zhou Zhipeng: It is absolutely creating new opportunities. In the past, assistants worked much like cogs on an assembly line. Someone skilled at drawing backgrounds, for instance, might spend an entire career drawing backgrounds.

With AI tools, assistants no longer need to wait for a lead artist to assign work. As long as they can tell a story themselves, they can independently deploy AI and assemble a complete work of their own. AI therefore lowers the industry’s barriers and gives people new opportunities for career advancement.

Q6: “Agent” is now a popular concept in AI. How is Shuimu Intelligence approaching it, and how does your AI “collaborate” like a team?

Zhou Zhipeng: We have a self-developed MAS system—a multi-agent system—with roughly two hundred-plus Agents now working together.

For example, when I want to make a short comic drama or a comic, the system has a “commander”—the scheduling core—that coordinates the work. It may assign one Agent to write the script, another to condense the novel, and others to extract plot points, prepare character biographies, design props, plant “hooks,” expand the story, edit, or generate AI visuals. The creator acts as the operator, directing this team of AI experts to complete the work.

Q7: Your business has expanded to Japan, correct? Japan is a global center of anime and manga. What is the market’s attitude toward AI comics, and how widely are they accepted?

Zhou Zhipeng: Yes. Our comics are distributed in Japan on platforms including Piccoma and LINE Manga.

The Japanese market is complex. On one hand, traditional anime and manga audiences are highly resistant to AI. Traditional comic publishers are both curious and concerned; teams from Sorajima, a leading Japanese short-drama company, have even visited our company in person to conduct research.

On the other hand, many people embrace AI. Some experienced creators and YouTube bloggers, for example, have praised our product extensively online.

Q8: The theme of this conference is “Creating Intelligence | The Individual Era.” How do you interpret it?

Zhou Zhipeng: I think the theme makes the point clearly: AI is no longer merely an auxiliary tool, but a core force driving change. AI sharply lowers the barrier to creation and brings about “creative equality.” Work that once required a large team—such as producing comics or animated comics—can now be completed by an individual or small team using AI tools.

Q9: How exactly does AI help “small teams” accomplish “big things”? Do you have real customer examples?

Zhou Zhipeng: There are many. A large share of our users are not professionals: they include high-school students, civil servants, and even 50-year-old men. They had never drawn before, but can now use our tools to generate comics.

In the professional market, a small team of 3 to 5 people uses our AI tools to mass-produce A-grade comics every week and distribute them simultaneously on major Chinese and international platforms such as Tencent Animation and Japan’s Piccoma. Achieving this volume and quality previously required a large studio with dozens or even hundreds of people. This is a typical example of a “small team delivering major results.”

Q10: For people who want to use AI in creative work, what do you see as the greatest opportunity and the greatest challenge today?

Zhou Zhipeng: The greatest opportunity is the “market dividend.” Major video platforms—including Douyin, Kuaishou, iQIYI, Youku, and Tencent Video—are all promoting “comic dramas.” Many users outside the traditional anime and comics audience also enjoy this fast-paced, high-conflict content, and demand is surging. AI can solve the problem of production at scale, allowing individual creators to experiment rapidly in pursuit of breakout hits.

The toughest challenge is “content homogeneity.” Because AI is so efficient, creators can easily crowd into the same subject matter. AI also cannot fully replace core creative work such as storyboard design and a character’s “expressive performance.” If creators do not think for themselves and rely entirely on AI, the result may differ greatly from what they expected.

Q11: Finally, what advice would you give “individual creators” or small teams seeking to capture the benefits of AI over the next 1–3 years? What should they learn?

Zhou Zhipeng: I would offer three suggestions:

Skills: Learn “AI collaboration.” You need to know how to break a complex creative task into parts and then use precise “incantations” (Prompt) to direct AI through it step by step.

Tools: Become proficient with AI platforms and closely follow new tools in your vertical—for example, tools specifically for animated comics or for training style models. That will make your output more consistent.

Mindset: Abandon the fantasy of “fully automated AI” as quickly as possible. Treat AI as an exceptionally capable “team of experts,” while you act as the “manager” or “director” responsible for coordination and quality control.

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Original publication: https://uniqueresearch.substack.com/p/unique-research-2025-11-04-02
On-site reading page: https://ffcap.cn/en/research/unique-research-2025-11-04-02