Norwegian striker Erling Haaland has become a cultural phenomenon in China, amassing over 7 million followers on Weibo and Douyin in just over a month through memes, AI edits, and the fan-created nick…
AI-generated videos and deepfake edits of soccer star Erling Haaland have gone viral during the 2026 FIFA World Cup, fueling a Solana-based meme token and surging NFT trading volumes. The phenomenon h…
A viral video of soccer star Erling Haaland reacting to his reflection in a restaurant was actually AI-generated footage of Chinese comedian Jin Long, not the real Haaland. The clip, which amassed ove…
China's Kling AI, a spin-off from Kuaishou Technology, is nearing a US$3 billion fundraising round at an US$18 billion valuation, with Tencent among the investors. The company plans to start its Hong …
ByteDance released Seed Audio 1.0, a generative audio model that produces full audio scenes with dialogue, ambient sound, and effects from a single prompt. The model uses latent diffusion and cross-mo…
ByteDance's Volcano Arc platform and Seedance AI video model are addressing the IP problem in AI video generation by licensing real actor likenesses and film assets through a revenue-sharing model. Th…
China's unicorn count rose to 381 in the 2026 Hurun Global Unicorn Index, up 38 from last year, with ByteDance ranking third globally behind OpenAI and Anthropic. The US leads with 806 unicorns, while…
ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, is in early-stage talks to raise approximately $20 billion in what would be its largest offshore loan ever, nearly doubling its previous record. The funds are …
AI tools like Midjourney and Sora are breaking down Chinese opera into datasets for generative models, enabling users to create opera-style content with simple prompts. This digitization, accelerated …
China's 618 shopping festival in 2026 hit a record 855.6 billion yuan in GMV, but weak consumer demand persisted as platforms stretched promotional windows. AI integration became central, with Alibaba…
Shares of Chinese e-commerce companies including JD.com and PDD Holdings fell after Beijing regulators summoned major platforms to criticize misleading advertising and unclear promotion rules tied to …
ByteDance's AI assistant Doubao incorrectly told a user his flight cancellation would cost only 5% of the ticket price, then claimed it would compensate him 600 yuan and that he could win a lawsuit ag…
ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok, raised its 2026 capital expenditure budget to approximately $30 billion, a 25% increase, to accelerate AI infrastructure expansion. The company plans to invest…
Hundreds of "LabGerm" videos depicting fish and other small animals undergoing torturous "experiments" have spread across TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook from Chinese social media, amassing millions o…