百花奖联合即梦AI首次设立AIGC推优单元：2038件作品参评，6部获推优荣誉

TL;DR - China's 38th Hundred Flowers Awards created its first AIGC-generated film track, with ByteDance's Jimeng AI (即梦) as exclusive tech partner; 2,038 submissions yielded 30 finalists and 6 award winners, signaling AI video generation moving from demo to production filmmaking.

• Scale and process: global call opened June 30, drew 2,038 entries in ~1 month and 110M Douyin topic views; 30 finalists, 24 "shortlist honors," 6 top awards judged by directors Tang Jili, Yu Baimei, Yi Xiaoxing, Zhou Difei and CUC professor Lü Xin.
• Tooling: Jimeng AI supplied video generation, submission channel, and compute credits; creators cited its Seedance model for multi-reference conditioning, style/art-direction control, shot generation, dialect voiceover, and emotional continuity across shots — one noted output needed almost no manual editing.
• Workflow shift: with Seedance 2.0, creators feed character assets, scene assets, style descriptions, color systems, and directorial blocking to the model, then curate outputs — AI generates volume, humans still make selection and narrative judgment.
• Cost/access claim: juror Tang Jili said a film like winner《断鞘》would previously need 20–30M RMB and can now be done by two people; multiple creators framed AI as lowering the production barrier while raising the bar on creative intent.