iQiyi, China’s largest standalone streaming platform with roughly 100 million subscribers, has started commercial testing of an AI production tool called Nadou Pro and is weaving artificial intelligence into nearly every layer of its business, from scriptwriting to viewer interaction. The moves mark the most aggressive AI pivot yet by a major Chinese entertainment company and come as iQiyi fights to reverse a slide in revenue and mounting losses.
CEO Gong Yu has not been subtle about the stakes. In remarks reported by the South China Morning Post, he said AI disruption of the entertainment industry is imminent and that AI-generated content is expected to appear on the platform. For a company often described as “China’s Netflix,” that is a bold bet: it assumes audiences will accept shows and films shaped, or even largely created, by algorithms.
Nadou Pro and the production overhaul
The centerpiece of iQiyi’s strategy is Nadou Pro, which the company calls China’s first AI agent designed specifically for professional film and television production. According to iQiyi’s corporate disclosure, the tool entered open commercial testing in early 2026 and is designed to handle the full arc of long-form video creation: script development, storyboarding, and final video output. It includes curated “blockbuster prompts” meant to steer creators toward cinematic-quality results. Wenfeng Liu, iQiyi’s senior vice president, described a unified workflow spanning creation, production, and distribution.
That “first in China” label deserves scrutiny. Rivals Youku (owned by Alibaba) and Bilibili have their own AI initiatives, and no independent body has confirmed that iQiyi leads in launch timing, feature depth, or professional adoption. The claim is a company marketing position, not an industry verdict.
Nadou Pro did not emerge from nowhere. iQiyi has spent roughly two years layering AI into its operations. On the production side, the company held a Virtual Production Open Day where it demonstrated IQStage, its virtual production platform. IQStage blends AI-generated environments with physical sets on LED stages, using patented in-house technology to render complex scenes that would otherwise require expensive location shoots. The pitch to directors: shorter schedules, lower costs, and more creative flexibility.
Behind the scenes, iQiyi had already deployed AI-generated content tools, often grouped under the label AIGC, for script evaluation, budgeting, and marketing. The company disclosed a partnership framework with Baidu’s ERNIE Bot to power parts of that pipeline. AI systems now analyze scripts for commercial potential, generate promotional materials, and assist with resource allocation across productions. That Baidu connection is significant: iQiyi’s majority owner operates one of China’s most advanced large language models, giving the streamer direct access to foundational AI technology without needing to shop for outside partners.
Turning viewers into participants
The AI push extends beyond the production floor. On the consumer side, iQiyi launched AI chatbots modeled on characters from popular shows, available through both the iQiyi app and Weibo. The idea is to turn passive viewers into active participants who can interact with fictional characters between episodes, effectively reframing parts of the platform as an interactive space rather than a one-way video feed.
Whether audiences are actually using these features remains unclear. iQiyi has not disclosed how many people have engaged with the chatbots or whether those interactions have moved the needle on watch time, subscriber retention, or conversion rates. The same gap applies to AI-assisted marketing: the company claims improved efficiency but has not offered independent measurements of the impact on revenue or growth.
Financial pressure as the catalyst
The financial picture helps explain the urgency. iQiyi’s fiscal year 2025 results, drawn from its NASDAQ-listed earnings release, showed revenue declining in RMB terms, a net loss attributable to the company, and operating cash flow that dropped sharply compared to the prior year. Management has emphasized cost discipline and efficiency throughout its recent communications.
Because iQiyi is publicly traded on NASDAQ, these figures carry regulatory weight and are subject to securities disclosure rules, making them more reliable than the promotional language surrounding product launches. They paint a picture of a company that cannot afford to keep producing content the traditional way and is turning to AI as a structural cost solution, not merely a flashy add-on.
For context, iQiyi is not alone in exploring AI-driven production. Netflix has experimented with AI tools for animation and visual effects. YouTube parent Alphabet is integrating generative AI across its platforms. But few major streamers have moved as quickly to commercialize an end-to-end AI production agent or to publicly frame AI as central to their survival strategy.
Unanswered questions
Several critical gaps remain. No primary source has detailed specific changes to the iQiyi app’s user interface or provided a concrete rollout timeline for how AI-generated content will appear to subscribers. The company has announced tools, held demonstrations, and described ambitions, but the distance between a production-side AI agent and a viewer-facing app redesign is significant, and iQiyi has not publicly bridged it with specifics.
Quality is another open question. Chinese streaming audiences have strong expectations for production values, particularly in period dramas and prestige series. Whether viewers will accept content that is partly or fully generated by AI has not been tested at scale, and iQiyi has not disclosed the quality threshold it plans to apply before putting AI-produced material in front of subscribers.
Regulation adds another layer of uncertainty. None of iQiyi’s corporate disclosures address how the company is handling content authenticity, copyright, or potential deepfake concerns within its AI pipeline. China’s regulators have been active in setting rules around AI-generated media, and stricter disclosure or approval requirements could alter the economics underpinning Nadou Pro and related tools.
What iQiyi’s bet actually means
Strip away the press-release language and the picture is straightforward: iQiyi is a financially pressured streaming platform with privileged access to Baidu’s AI infrastructure, and it is using that access to rebuild how it creates, markets, and delivers content. Nadou Pro, IQStage, AIGC-assisted back-office tools, and character chatbots all point toward a future in which a significant share of the company’s creative, technical, and promotional work runs through algorithms.
Nearly all of the concrete product details come from iQiyi’s own press releases distributed through PR Newswire. These are official company statements, but they are also promotional by nature. Readers should treat feature descriptions, efficiency claims, and competitive assertions accordingly.
The strongest evidence supports a narrow but important conclusion: iQiyi is rapidly building and deploying AI tools across development, production, and marketing, and has begun commercializing a professional-grade AI agent for long-form video. What the evidence does not yet support are bolder claims about transformed viewer behavior, sustainable cost reductions, or competitive dominance. Those will only become clear as the company moves from announcements to sustained, measurable changes in what actually appears on screen.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
