ByteDance’s new AI video model goes viral as China looks for second DeepSeek moment

FILE PHOTO: Illustration shows Bytedance logo · Reuters

Eduardo Baptista

Thu, February 12, 2026 at 6:36 PM GMT+9 2 min read

By Eduardo Baptista

BEIJING, Feb 12 (Reuters) - ByteDance’s new video-generating artificial intelligence model has already impressed the likes of Elon Musk and gone viral in China, where ‌it has been compared to DeepSeek and won praise for its ability to ‌produce cinematic storylines with just a few prompts.

While text-centric AI models such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and DeepSeek’s R1 have ​become widely adopted, models specialised in generating videos and pictures represent the next frontier in the technology’s potential for disruption.

ByteDance, which officially unveiled Seedance 2.0 on Thursday, said in a statement that the system was designed for professional film, e-commerce, and advertising productions, because it was capable of ‌processing text, images, audio, and video ⁠simultaneously, lowering the cost of creating content.

The product launch comes as China and investors around the world are on the lookout for a successor ⁠to Chinese startup DeepSeek’s R1 and V3 models whose global debut early in 2025 triggered a systemic shock.

On Chinese social media, Seedance 2.0 drew comparisons to DeepSeek’s meteoric rise to fame.

“Early last year, the ​release ​of DeepSeek-R1 sparked heated debate in the U.S. tech ​community over a ‘Sputnik moment’,” Chinese state-backed ‌newspaper Global Times wrote in an editorial on Wednesday.

“This year, the continued breakout success of Seedance 2.0 and similar innovations has gone even further, giving rise to a wave of admiration for China within Silicon Valley.”

The buzz generated by Seedance 2.0 was underscored when the world’s richest man Elon Musk replied to a post praising the model on his social media platform ‌X by commenting, “It’s happening fast.”

Users on China’s Weibo ​microblogging platform shared videos generated by the AI model that ​showcased the complexity and image quality ​of its output, no matter how bizarre the prompt.

One 2-minute video, which ‌had been viewed around a million times ​on Weibo, depicted rapper ​and record producer Ye, formerly known as Kanye West, and reality TV star Kim Kardashian, as characters in a palace drama set in Imperial China, speaking and singing ​in Mandarin.

Hashtags related to Seedance ‌2.0 have racked up tens of millions of clicks on Weibo, including one ​from state-owned newspaper Beijing Daily that read “from DeepSeek to Seedance, China’s AI has ​succeeded.”

(Reporting by Eduardo Baptista; Editing by Kate Mayberry)

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