In a screening room in Tokyo packed with filmmakers and creators from around the world, Oscar-winning art director Tim Yip made it clear that human emotions should be preserved even in the age of artificial intelligence.
“Technology is so powerful that to make it a tool rather than a god, we have to reach something higher than technology,” Yip said at the KlingAI NextGen Creative Contest awards ceremony and panel discussion.
The event, held in parallel with the Tokyo International Film Festival, showcased the winning films from a competition that received more than 4,600 entries from 122 countries and regions, all competing for a total prize pool of $42,000. But the night’s most powerful moments focused not just on celebrating technical excellence, but on deeply personal stories about memory, humanity, and the creative partnership between humans and machines.
Zeng Yushen, representing Kling AI, set the tone for the evening by positioning the contest as more than just a competition. “Tonight is not just about presenting awards, it’s about celebrating creators and all the stories they bring to life,” he said. “At Kling AI, we always want to give creators the tools to expand their creative freedom, as well as provide new tools for radical new storytelling.”
Director Yip, who won the Academy Award for Best Design for “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon,” praised his grand prize-winning film “Alzheimer,” which explores memory loss. The film, created by Chinese student C·one and inspired by the relatives of team members who suffer from this disease, uses the aesthetics of oil painting to depict the inner lives of people experiencing cognitive decline.
“When you’re young, energy comes out of you, so you always have new energy to build new ideas,” Yip reflected. “But in the end, you live more and more outside of your body and mind. So I think this is really important, whether it’s an AI movie, a modern movie, or a classic movie. Movies are always about humans and also about their relationship with the world and the environment.”
South Korean director Lee Hwan-kyung, whose 2013 film “Miracle in Cell No. 7” became a box-office phenomenon, echoed this emphasis on emotional authenticity. Director Lee said, “I think it would be better to think about how we can work with AI to express human emotions in movies,” drawing laughter. “Personally, I just hope that AI technology develops really slowly.”
The award-winning creator himself spoke about how AI tools enable him to realize deeply personal visions not possible with traditional filmmaking. Lee Mong, a Korean media artist and adjunct professor who won the Official Selection Award for “I’m Not a Robot,” envisioned the potential of AI to create new forms of storytelling. “I envision a future of interactive movies,” she said. “If we can leverage technology and networks to create some kind of playground, that can be very powerful.”
Polish filmmaker and motion designer Dawid Mellor, whose Lost & Found was also officially selected, says AI is liberating. “I had collected a lot of ideas, but when you create a film or a story there are many limitations. You are limited by budget and technology and sometimes by the inconvenient time of your collaborators,” he said. “But thanks to AI, I can finally free myself and do a lot of this kind of stuff by myself.”
Grand Prize winner C.one explained the creative process behind ‘Alzheimer’. “When you use this AI tool, just like with cameras, clean AI is the first step,” he said. “This is a process for me to sort out this story and start thinking seriously about this storytelling.”
Yip shared his journey of experimentation with AI and explained how he created an alien character who searches for human ruins in empty space. “When I talked to him, he changed. He would respond to me,” Yip said of the AI tool. “Each time, I’m not asking him what to do. I’m just asking him questions. And they come up with different responses. So I follow those responses and go deeper and deeper.”
The night highlighted both the possibilities and fears surrounding AI in filmmaking. Yip warned the media against focusing too much on the spectacle. “I’m worried that when we’re still only working on the exciting moments, maybe five years from now, there won’t be anyone who will have a really strong reaction to all of them,” he said. “The most important thing is to go back to reality, iterate, and try to create. But I think AI is really for me. It’s really exciting because we’re trying to add a human touch to it, a really smart human touch.”
But the panel’s overarching message was one of cooperation, not competition. Lee suggested that AI could help bridge the traditional conflict between screenwriters and directors by enabling rapid visualization of scenarios. “I believe there is potential to really unify the point between the screenwriter and the person who is going to direct it,” he said.
Mellor gave a concrete example of the democratizing potential of AI, explaining how a scene that cost half the film’s budget and would have taken weeks with traditional effects was roughly finished in five minutes using Kling AI. “Now it’s not just the big Hollywood studios that can afford to make really high-quality work,” he said. “Anyone can actually do it, even if you have a small team or a single creator.”
The event was hosted by Kling AI, a platform with over 45 million users worldwide and an annual revenue run rate of over $100 million within 10 months of launch. The NextGen Creative Contest offers a total prize pool of $42,000, with China, the United States, and India leading in entries.
At the end of the night, C.one announced his plans to create a new AI film about the grasslands of his home region, exploring ways to better integrate AI with traditional storytelling techniques. Leamon expressed interest in developing interactive films to help combat social isolation, and Mellor revealed he is working on both a traditional sci-fi comedy and a fully animated AI series.
Perhaps the most memorable insight came from Yip, who was asked what advice he would give to emerging AI creators. “I think anything is possible,” he said simply, describing the creative process as moving “from the outside in.”
The panel was moderated by Hanqing, founder of AI Talk.
In an era of rapid technological change, the Tokyo gathering suggested that the future of filmmaking may depend less on choosing between humans and artificial intelligence, and more on thoughtfully integrating human emotions while keeping them firmly in the driver’s seat.
