IT之家 On October 28, it was reported that Douyin's (Doubao) PR lead Liu Xing published a statement today saying that the rumor that "Hengdian partnered with ByteDance to feed the likenesses and voices of 150,000 extras into ByteDance's large model" is severely false.
He stated that the Hengdian Film and Television AI Service Platform project is actually intended to build a set of public digital infrastructure, turning assets such as film base physical locations into high-quality datasets, helping production crews select locations, prepare and shoot more efficiently, while also lowering the threshold for small and medium-sized film and television enterprises to use AI, enabling more creators to have the conditions to produce quality works.
IT之家 noticed that the article mentions that Volcano Engine was the technical support provider in this project, and all data assets,all belong to Hengdian or the authorized parties. This project involves the use of anyone's likeness and voice, which certainly requires the person's own authorization. The data of this project will also not be used to train ByteDance's large models.
Further Reading
According to public information, the 2026 Hengdian Film and Television Culture Industry Development Conference was held on October 23, 2026, in Hengdian, Dongyang, Jinhua, Zhejiang, under the theme "Digital and Intelligent Empowerment of Light and Shadow, Craftsmanship in Deep Cultivation of Quality Works." At the conference, the Dongyang Municipal People's Government reached a cooperation with Volcano Engine to launch the "Hengdian π" AI platform, targeting the entire workflow of film and television creativity, shooting, production, and distribution, and exploring AI-empowered creative paths for live-action dramas, micro short dramas, and other diverse formats.