Summary
Chinese creator Jiaze Li, known as DiDi_OK, is building a connected body of AI science-fiction shorts around small disruptions to everyday reality. His 11-minute Website reached the final ten of the Reply AI Film Festival and won its AI Studios Grand Prix and Community Award, while Signs won Bilibili’s AI creation competition. Earlier works include Arrow, and his newer film Candy extends recurring questions about observation, power and free will. Li studied animation at University of the Arts London and worked as a digital artist at WPP before adopting tools including Runway, Veo and Kling. He argues that as generation becomes accessible, visual judgment, writing and knowledge of traditional film matter more, not less.
Hana’s perspective
What interests me is not that one creator found a shortcut, but that traditional visual training became more valuable when generation got cheaper. Li’s emphasis on taste, composition and narrative continuity pushes against the idea that model access alone makes a director. His work suggests the durable skill is deciding which strange rule can sustain a story, then controlling many generated shots tightly enough that viewers follow the idea rather than the tool.
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