Why Chinese AI is leaving US tech giants behind in the video race

Chinese artificial intelligence companies have overtaken their American counterparts in AI-generated video, establishing a clear lead in one of the most competitive areas of generative AI. Eleanor Olcott reports for the Financial Times that platforms like ByteDance and Kuaishou now outperform US rivals in quality and ease of use.

The advantage stems largely from data. ByteDance and Kuaishou own major short-video platforms, including TikTok, giving them access to enormous libraries of footage that are difficult for competitors to replicate. Some experts also say Chinese companies have been more aggressive in using copyrighted material.

Tools like Kling, Seedance 2.0, and Hailuo rank highly on independent user-based leaderboards, while American offerings from OpenAI and Google score lower in real-world tests. Users cite looser content restrictions and lower prices as additional advantages of Chinese tools.

“Most of the American models that we’ve tried are not very good at video generation,” said Ben Chiang, founder of Director AI. He attributes this partly to stricter content controls that limit output quality.

The commercial potential is growing fast. Vincent Yang, CEO of Firework, notes that brands can now generate video at previously impossible scales. One retailer commissioned 100,000 product videos using AI tools.

Google’s Veo 3 remains competitive, benefiting from YouTube footage, but faces more content restrictions. OpenAI shut down its Sora model in March, citing high computing costs.