South Korean entertainment giant CJ ENM is betting big on artificial intelligence to create its future film, TV and animation hits.
The company, which distributed the Palme d’Or and Oscar-winning Parasite, outlined its AI strategy at a presentation in Seoul today (June 30) and premiered an original AI animation series, Cat Biggie.
Shin Keun-sup, chief strategy officer at CJ ENM, said AI would help the company be more competitive in the digital content landscape.
The company, which is celebrating its 30th anniversary this year, also demonstrated two proprietary AI production systems that it is using in its workflows, ’Cinematic AI’ and ’AI Script.’
It said the Cinematic AI system is designed for narrative content such as drama and film. The system integrates image, video, sound, and voice, unlike other workflows that require separate tools.
CJ ENM said the tool also automatically processes 3D characters and environments with the aim of creating a consistent and coherent visual output—a long-standing challenge in AI-generated videos.
AI Script is an AI agent system designed to help discover original IP. CJ ENM said the tool analyses consumer demand and market trends, identifying promising IP and suggesting suitable genres and media.
Unlike conventional AI models provided by existing big tech companies, CJ ENM said AI Script has a more nuanced understanding of literary language that enables deeper analysis of content marketability with cross-lingual insights.
“We are applying AI across the entire content value chain—including planning, production, distribution, and marketing—to expand AI content production across genres and formats. This allows us to secure next-generation IP,” said Shin. “At the same time, we’re nurturing a new generation of creators equipped with AI technology, business, and content planning expertise, and expanding our AI team to position CJ ENM as a global AI studio.”
As part of the showcase, CJ ENM premiered Cat Biggie, a non-verbal short-form 30 x 2-mins animation series created in-house. The series took five months to complete, including content planning and character development, by a team of six specialists. CJ ENM said the speed and scale of the project are noteworthy, given that a typical five minute 3D animation takes three to four months to produce. The story follows a cat who unexpectedly meets a baby chick and becomes its father and will be released for global audiences on YouTube starting in July.
Baek Hyun-jung, head of AI business and production, led the planning and production of the series. “The key challenge was controlling and expressing the dynamic movements unique to animation,” she said. “We used our tool, Cinematic AI, to convert the characters into 3D data and train the production system accordingly. This allowed us to achieve a high level of completeness in the final output.”
CJ ENM plans to expand the use of its tools to AI film and AI drama later this year.