The Technological and Cultural Game of Chinese Animated Films in the AIGC Era

Liu Lihui, Lü Xin
(School of Animation and Digital Arts, Communication University of China, Beijing 100024)

Abstract

[Objective] This paper focuses on the translation of traditional cultural symbols by Artificial Intelligence Generated Content (AIGC) technology in Chinese animated film production, examining the game between technology and culture to find a balance between technological empowerment and cultural inheritance. [Method] Through semiotic analysis, we examine the semantic attrition that may occur in cultural symbols during AI generation, and investigate the morphological transformation of traditional cultural elements in the AIGC process through the lens of cultural genes. [Results] While AIGC technology can significantly enhance production efficiency and visual effects in animated films, it simultaneously weakens cultural imagery. Therefore, two major strategies—"cultural gene database" and "human correction intervention"—must be implemented in actual creation to ensure the accuracy of "cultural translation" in animation production. [Conclusion] Animation creation in the AIGC era should establish a dual-track model of "technology + culture" to empower the dissemination of traditional culture through technology, ultimately achieving the co-construction and sharing of "digital craftsmanship spirit" and cultural confidence.

Keywords: AIGC; Chinese traditional culture; cultural symbols; technological empowerment; cultural confidence
Library Classification Number: G202
Document Code: A
Article ID: 1671-0134(2025)03-07-05
DOI: 10.19483/j.cnki.11-4653/n.2025.03.001
Citation Format: Liu Lihui, Lü Xin. The Technological and Cultural Game of Chinese Animated Films in the AIGC Era [J]. China Media Technology, 2025, 32(3): 7-11.

1. Technological Empowerment and Cultural Translation: Challenges and Opportunities in the AIGC Era

The world has entered a strategic competition era dominated by technological innovation. With the rapid iteration of frontier artificial intelligence technologies, industrial applications are poised to explode. Animated films, television animation, and web animation are developing simultaneously across multiple tracks, demonstrating promising forms in both style and content. The relevant industrial chains have gained new opportunities during this explosive period, attracting social and capital attention [1]. Digital technology has enabled increasingly deep AI application in content creation, and animated film production is no exception. AIGC technology has opened broader creative horizons for the vigorous development of China's animated film industry, accelerating production processes and enhancing visual effects. However, under the wave of globalization, challenges have emerged between technological innovation and cultural depth. Chinese animation creators must guard against the dilution and distortion of cultural symbols to ensure that these symbols can profoundly demonstrate their unique connotations in modern narratives, possessing both artistic aesthetics and cultural heritage.

1.1 The Rise of AIGC Technology and Revolution in Animation Creation

AIGC represents a new production mode that utilizes AI technology to automatically generate content, following professionally generated content and user-generated content [2]. In recent years, the rapid development of AIGC technology has enabled intelligent creation to penetrate deeply into animated film production, transforming traditional creative processes and artistic presentation forms while breaking through conventional constraints on creative expression and significantly improving production efficiency. First, AIGC technology substantially reduces time costs. From meticulous character development in scripts to elaborate scene design, each step traditionally requires a lengthy process. However, AI technology, with its excellent image generation capabilities, can produce large quantities of high-precision images in extremely short timeframes. By learning from historical materials and existing styles, it can provide valuable inspiration sources for creators, greatly reducing the burden of repetitive labor and allowing creative teams to focus their energy primarily on conceptualization and creativity. AIGC technology can create innovative images and scene effects based on its analytical capabilities of massive data while preserving the classic charm of traditional animation. This transformation marks the gradual shift of animated film creation from traditional manual modes to new stages of intelligent creation.

Second, AIGC technology is leading animated films toward a new direction of digitalization and intelligence. In the creative practice of major animated films such as Nezha: The Devil Boy Strikes Back (hereafter Nezha 2), AI has become an indispensable assistant and efficient tool in concept design, production management, technical implementation, and marketing communication. From fluid character movements to vivid environmental simulations, the creative flexibility and space provided by this technology offer powerful support for production teams, making visual presentations more delicate and visually stunning. The Decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China on Further Deepening Reform Comprehensively to Advance Chinese-Style Modernization proposes "exploring effective mechanisms for the integration of culture and technology, and accelerating the development of new cultural business formats" [3]. Against this backdrop, the film and television production industry has entered a new era of "human + AI" deep integration, and Chinese animated film works with profound cultural heritage will inevitably usher in comprehensive improvements in speed and quality internationally, winning broader recognition and acclaim.

1.3 Dilemmas in Cultural Translation and Coping Strategies

The application of AIGC technology has brought dilemmas and challenges to cultural inheritance in animation creation. How can we mitigate or avoid the risks of semantic weakening and cultural imagery loss faced during the transmission of cultural symbols? AI-generated content typically relies on large amounts of data for "imitation" and "reconstruction," with limited understanding of the historical and social backgrounds behind cultural symbols. This may interfere with the accurate translation of cultural symbols at the semantic transmission level, causing information transmission bias, while also potentially weakening the original flavor of symbols at the cultural imagery retention level, triggering semantic attrition and cultural imagery dilution.

As Roland Barthes (1915–1980) stated in Elements of Semiology, images have a "signifying function" [4]. Images contain rich semantics and cultural imagery, serving not merely as surface-level pictures or text but as carriers of deep cultural meaning. However, AI integration has brought unprecedented challenges to this traditional art form: the "signified" cultural connotations may be simplified or misinterpreted during the generation process, particularly when AI-generated character creation fails to adequately reflect deep cultural identity, relying solely on surface features of images or symbols for re-creation or modification. Therefore, creation relying only on AIGC technology will neglect the underlying social, historical, and cultural contexts.

The dilemma of translating traditional cultural symbols is mainly manifested in two aspects: whether cultural symbols can be re-innovated through AIGC technology to adapt to modern aesthetics and narrative needs, and whether the profound traditional cultural connotations and related emotional expressions that creators intend to convey can avoid being "weakened" or "distorted" during the technology empowerment process. While AI generation may quickly produce dynamic scenes and character images, it cannot grasp the historical and cultural connotations of characters. The generated images often only represent superficial forms of characters, failing to convey their historical, cultural spirit, and symbolic meaning. How to maintain the multiple symbolisms and cultural connotations of traditional cultural symbols under technology-driven conditions, avoiding overly superficial or homogenized presentations, and achieving harmonious coexistence between technology and culture? The coping strategy involves adopting "human correction intervention" and "cultural gene anchoring" for adjustment.

Specifically, creators can first "communicate" with and "train" AI, reviewing and modifying generated content to ensure its symbolic and emotional expressions align with traditional cultural backgrounds. Additionally, ensuring that generated cultural symbols can retain their original cultural meanings—especially in animated films involving traditional cultural themes—requires the participation of cultural experts and historians. "Human correction" can compensate for the lack of emotional depth and historical-cultural absence in AI-generated content. AIGC creation should combine precise establishment of cultural gene anchoring based on traditional culture, extracting the core connotations of traditional cultural symbols. "Human correction" then supervises and optimizes each link in the generation process, enabling AI to correctly interpret the deep meanings of cultural symbols during innovation and re-creation, avoiding phenomena such as symbol distortion and hollowness in the technical generation process.

2. The Multidimensionality of Cultural Symbols: Inheritance and Innovation of Cultural Genes

Chinese animated film creation needs to harness the power of AIGC to improve the accurate reproduction of traditional cultural symbols through "cultural gene database" and "human correction intervention," further ensuring the precision of cultural symbols in the AI generation process, avoiding the weakening and miscommunication of cultural images, thereby promoting the global dissemination and recognition of Chinese traditional culture. How can AIGC assist animation creation in achieving the modern translation of traditional culture, enabling the multidimensional meanings of cultural symbols to achieve harmonious coexistence between technology and culture? This is an important issue currently facing creation.

2.1 Inheritance of Cultural Genes: Cultural Gene Database

The concept of "cultural gene" originates from biological genetics, describing the basic unit of culture in the transmission and evolution process. It was first proposed by British evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. Dawkins borrowed the concept of gene to define memes as "units of cultural transmission and imitation" [5]. These "genes" inherited from generation to generation enable cultural continuity and evolution. However, when using AIGC technology to reproduce traditional cultural elements, it appears inadequate due to the lack of deep understanding of these "cultural genes," as it cannot effectively capture and transmit these complex cultural genes. Only through more innovative and profound cultural expression can products become artworks with deep cultural value and emotional resonance, while also forming differentiated competitive advantages in the market.

The widespread application of AIGC technology, 3D rendering, and digital painting tools has improved animation creation efficiency, but its generated content often struggles to understand the complexity behind these symbols, easily leading to simplification of cultural symbols or even loss of cultural imagery. Therefore, human correction intervention is needed for improvement. Chang'an San Wan Li is an animated film that successfully transmits Chinese excellent traditional culture. Through vivid reproduction of 48 classic Tang Dynasty poems, it shapes three-dimensional images of historical cultural masters such as Li Bai, Gao Shi, Du Fu, and Wang Wei, presenting the prosperous scene and poetic atmosphere of the Tang Dynasty's golden age. The film cleverly integrates historical authenticity with artistic innovation, achieving modern transformation and dissemination of traditional poetry through deep appreciation of classical poetry and broad attention to and interest stimulation in traditional culture, allowing audiences to experience the charm of traditional poetry while sparking a nationwide "Tang Poetry Fever."

AIGC technology might be used to quickly generate Tang-style character costumes, scene details, and numerous visual elements, saving preliminary design and rendering time and assisting artists in exploring visual styles and creative solutions. However, it may also bring insufficient cultural connotation expression, inadequate historical accuracy, and inconsistent visual styles. Particularly, Tang poetry has profound cultural heritage and delicate emotional expression that is difficult to embody. Therefore, AIGC and human creation must collaborate to ensure that technology assists rather than dominates, truly achieving accurate transmission of cultural value. As British scholar Viktor Mayer-Schönberger mentioned in his book Big Data: The Wave of the Era, using big data and algorithms must consider cultural diversity and complexity, meaning that AIGC technology requires "cultural mediation" to better serve the goal of cultural inheritance [6].

Combining semiotic theory, particularly Ferdinand de Saussure's semiotics, the "signifier" and "signified" of cultural symbols are both significant. The "signifier" is the physical manifestation of the symbol, such as images or sounds, while the "signified" represents cultural meaning and symbolic content—the meaning of the symbol [7]. AI technology can learn and acquire the "signified" part of symbols (the deep cultural background and historical connotation) through cultural gene databases, which cannot be achieved merely by presenting surface-level symbols. After establishing a cultural gene database, AI can extract necessary cultural information when generating content, enabling it to generate visual effects or visual presentations of symbolic meaning that align with requirements, thereby understanding and expressing the cultural, historical, and social meanings contained in symbols.

2.2 Gatekeeping Cultural Transmission: Human Correction Intervention

Technological innovation has brought complex games to the transmission and re-creation of traditional cultural symbols. In the generation process of cultural symbols, to ensure that generated content can convey both visual performance and cultural connotation, achieving complete retention of cultural symbol emotion and depth, effective cultural transmission, and further optimization of character design, human intervention for cultural correction is needed in the AIGC empowerment process to maintain cultural authenticity and avoid "shallow" and "distorted" symbols. Adding mechanisms for human review and adjustment in the AI generation process ensures that generated content meets cultural accuracy requirements and avoids deviations in technical generation. Human review is required at every stage of AI-generated content. Through refined technical control and cultural guidance, the deep integration of traditional cultural elements and modern technology can be achieved, optimizing the cultural expression effect of AIGC-generated content.

The symbols in animated films may represent not only traditional mythological characters and stories in the film translation process but also the deep connotations of visual representation and cultural-historical re-creation. Although AI can shape multiple character images in a short time, the emotional conflicts and complex inner communications of characters in animated films cannot be directly achieved through AI creation alone. Therefore, how to combine technology and culture to promote innovation while maintaining cultural depth has become an unavoidable challenge for creators.

3. Chinese Animation in the Global Context: Technological Empowerment and Cultural Confidence

The integration of digital technology and cultural confidence is not only a core concept in contemporary Chinese animated film creation but also a driving force propelling Chinese animation into international markets. "Cultural confidence" signifies recognition of and pride in one's own culture and unique values, reflecting the cultural confidence of Chinese animated films. Using animated films to disseminate Chinese traditional culture can enable global audiences to more vividly recognize the unique charm of Chinese traditional culture. Stuart Hall's cultural encoding theory proposes that the meaning of cultural symbols is a product of society and history, endowed with multiple interpretations through specific cultural contexts [8]. The reconstruction of cultural symbols requires combining the social background and cultural value behind the symbols on the basis of visual effects. In this process, AI technology can further enhance the emotion, symbolism, and original cultural-historical meaning that images can convey through algorithms and data models, coupled with deep participation from creators and cultural experts. AIGC, through deep learning and image generation technology, assists in creating images and scenes that conform to historical and cultural backgrounds while endowing symbols with new visual effects. Animated film works, leveraging AI technology's production capabilities, may more vividly present ancient Chinese stories or myths, allowing these cultural symbols to radiate new vitality and enhance national cultural influence globally.

3.1 The Combination of Digital Technology and Cultural Confidence

The modern narrative of traditional aesthetics is both a representation of symbols and a transmission of cultural values and emotional connotations. Artificial intelligence technology can provide creators with more flexible and diverse creative tools in narrative, helping them broaden the space for expressing traditional cultural elements and enabling innovation based on traditional aesthetics. Nezha 2 is a model example of combining digital technology and cultural confidence. Through innovation in character design, scene rendering, and action performance, it successfully retains the core characteristics of Nezha as a traditional cultural symbol while giving it a modern sense in visual language. The Nezha in the film conveys the values of "rebellious spirit" and "self-salvation" in Chinese traditional culture, making the image extremely modern and gaining recognition and affection from global audiences. This film has promoted the internationalization of Chinese animated films and allowed Chinese traditional cultural symbols to be more widely disseminated globally.

3.2 Interaction Between Digital Craftsmanship Spirit and Global Market

"Digital craftsmanship spirit" lies in meticulously crafted technology and the pursuit of excellence in creative quality. Animation creators enable traditional cultural symbols to present more personalized expressions through AI technology by achieving exquisite visual effects and deeper cultural expression. The process of creators achieving lean creation through technology is precisely the process of embodying the digital craftsmanship spirit that respects and innovates traditional culture. The animated film Chang'an San Wan Li, which digitally restores Tang Dynasty architecture and poetic imagery with exquisite detail, demonstrates animation creators' ultimate pursuit of quality and detail. This spirit is the continuous improvement of Chinese animation quality and international competitiveness, achieved through精益求精 (pursuit of excellence) and technological innovation. Chinese animation's national style is not only an expression of external form but also the construction of internal national implication and spirit [9]. Nezha 2 successfully achieved breakthroughs and interactions for Chinese animation in the global market through high-quality digital production, gaining tremendous positive reputation worldwide. By combining traditional mythological elements with modern visual styles, it designs the character image of the "Dragon King," and in scene presentation, through refined digital modeling and unique rendering, presents the "Dragon Palace" as a magnificent, imposing, and mysteriously majestic seascape. These visual presentations, which precisely employ cutting-edge technological means to interact closely with the global market, are loyal to the spiritual connotations of traditional culture while integrating global market acceptance and modern aesthetics, successfully pushing Chinese traditional culture onto the world stage.

3.3 Chinese Animation Creation Path: The Dual-Track Model of Technology and Culture

Animated film creation is an artistic presentation and a bridge for global cultural communication. Technological empowerment and cultural transmission are not opposing forces but can jointly promote Chinese culture to the world, thereby better showcasing the charm of Chinese traditional culture. Chinese animated films need to develop through a "dual-track model of technology and culture," promoting both technological innovation and ensuring the depth and accuracy of cultural inheritance. AIGC technology can improve animation production efficiency through highly automated creative means and can further help creators achieve culturally confident dissemination globally in the future. In global cultural competition, it is necessary to ensure that these symbols meet modern aesthetic demands while transmitting the depth and symbolic meaning of Chinese culture. AIGC technology provides creators with the ability to innovate and express based on local culture, achieving worldwide dissemination through digital platforms. While empowering and transmitting the profound heritage of traditional culture, animated works break through language, cultural, and geographical limitations, bringing Chinese traditional aesthetics to global audiences through modern technological means. With technological support, Chinese animated film creation can conduct cultural communication more efficiently and make appropriate human correction interventions based on the cultural needs of different regions and backgrounds, making the process of cultural sharing more extensive and profound.

As AIGC technology penetrates deeper into animated film creation, more works like Nezha 2 may emerge—they are no longer simple entertainment products but crystallizations of the spirit of the era and the power of technology. In the process of cultural transmission, creators still play a leading role and need to ensure the uniqueness, depth, and connotation of traditional cultural symbols are accurately preserved in modern translation. Future Chinese animated films will become catalysts for cultural communication through the "dual-track model of technology and culture," providing stronger support for Chinese animated films to enter the world stage. AIGC-enabled Chinese animated film creation can facilitate better and faster cultural transmission, not only adding rich and colorful content to local cultural expression but also bringing broader perspectives to global cultural dissemination. By relying on technological empowerment to accurately discover and understand audience cultural needs, and through modern interpretation and deep演绎 (deductive presentation) of traditional cultural symbols, cross-cultural communication can be achieved, further promoting the global recognition of Chinese traditional culture. As cultural scholar Edward Hall stated, symbols in high-context cultures often rely on implicit background information and contextual understanding [10]. Using technological means to promote the presentation of high-context culture can not only provide strong support for animated film creation but also contribute to cultural confidence and innovation. Chinese animated film creators should actively utilize new technologies, focusing on the dissemination of cultural connotations and the continuation of spirit while continuously injecting new vitality into Chinese culture, further promoting Chinese culture to shine more brilliantly on the world stage through technological empowerment.

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Author Biographies

Liu Lihui (1995–), female, from Anqing, Anhui, is a lecturer and a 2024 doctoral candidate at the School of Animation and Digital Arts, Communication University of China. Her research focuses on esports culture and game artificial intelligence.

Lü Xin (1978–), male, from Lanzhou, Gansu, is a professor with a Ph.D. at the School of Animation and Digital Arts, Communication University of China. His research focuses on virtual digital humans and intelligent media product design.

(Responsible Editor: Li Jing)