iQIYI builds a 16-episode drama with AI and two actors

iQIYI published the trailer for "Immortals Over Mortal Love" on September 23, 2026, a three-season drama it calls the first full-length hybrid AI series, made by combining live-action performances from professional actors with graphics generated on the company's own production platform.

The first season arrives in the fourth quarter of this year with 16 episodes of about 20 minutes each, released on what iQIYI describes in its announcement as a concurrent review and broadcast model. The company lists the series as xianxia, the Chinese fantasy genre built on immortals, cultivation and dynastic myth, and the trailer is streaming on iQIYI's own platform.

The production platform is the part worth reading closely. NadouPro is iQIYI's studio-grade system, built on a mix of public and self-deployed large models, and the company says it has folded years of long-form video know-how into AI agents. Around that it has assembled a creator ecosystem with a Talent Hub, a commissions marketplace, a digital asset marketplace and a script marketplace. The numbers iQIYI published with the trailer are 1,600-plus digital assets, 150 voice assets and 6,600 IP titles.

"Leveraging NadouPro, our proprietary studio-grade production platform, we have achieved meaningful improvements in production efficiency and cost optimization while maintaining professional-grade production standards," said Yu Gong, iQIYI's founder, director and chief executive. He called it a paradigm shift in content creation rather than a single tool release.

That claim is where the story sits for anyone making AI video outside a streaming platform. Nikkei Asia reported on September 24 that iQIYI is testing the technology in longer, paid content, which is a different commercial bet from the short-form clips most generative video has been pointed at. The trailer shows two actors performing against generated environments rather than a fully synthetic cast, so the human performance is still the thing being sold.

Whether the "first" label holds is a matter of definition. Hybrid work mixing generated sets, extensions and effects with live footage has been shipping in film and advertising for a while, and studios have been quieter about it than iQIYI is being here. The distinction iQIYI is claiming is scale and format: a multi-season, episode-length production made on one company's generative stack rather than a clip or a proof of concept.

iQIYI has been building toward this publicly. The company ran a Global AI Creator Challenge with Alibaba's Wan 3.0 and its own NadouPro this month, with submissions closing September 23, and the NadouPro marketplaces are the commercial layer under that contest: assets, voices and licensed IP that a creator inside iQIYI's system can rent or sell.

The useful detail for a creator is the review-and-broadcast release model: the season is being delivered while it is still being checked, which is how the platform gets a long series to subscribers without holding all 16 episodes back.