Heart of the production was a creative product film built around an exceptional premise: the chosen brand ambassador—the historical figure Li Ching-Yuen—is long deceased. For this project, he was digitally reconstructed as an AI avatar based on a dedicated data model. We combined carefully researched image references, historical archive photographs, and authentic descriptions to create a lifelike on-screen presence.
The AMA AI Media Agency offers this capability to brands in any industry—from a virtual company founder to historical personalities and fully fictional characters. The advantage: storytelling gains depth, because an avatar can assume the role of the narrator, address the audience directly, and anchor the brand message emotionally.
In Li Ching-Yuen’s case, special care was taken to portray him with respect for the historical persona. As he is a long-deceased figure, no living personality rights are infringed. Instead, the reconstruction serves cultural and narrative contextualization—comparable to staged depictions in documentaries or theatre.
Efficiency gains without sacrificing quality
With traditional production methods, a project of this scope—seven Asian locations, including mountain landscapes in Sichuan, villages in Guangxi, and tropical forests in Southeast Asia—would have demanded enormous logistical and time resources. Beyond travel planning, permits, and crew coordination, the production would have required aligning weather conditions and the seasonal bloom of specific plants. Instead, the virtual locations were created using generative image and film systems, producing photoreal textures and dynamic camera movements. This enabled scenes to be realized in a short timeframe, with creative variations that would be difficult—or nearly impossible—to achieve in reality.
Licensed voices instead of legal grey zones
For the voice-over, we used an AI-licensed voice—a legally sound approach in which the speaker is compensated for the use of their voice. It underlines that AI productions do not operate in a rights-free space. The entire production relied on licensed tools—from music generated via AI prompting and properly licensed, to bespoke visual assets created exclusively for the client.
Creative freedom and visual density
In the film’s narrative, the audience follows a researcher on a journey to the origins of Shòu Lè Kãng: from the terraced fields of southern China, to the peaks of the Himalayas, into the jungle with Polygonum multiflorum, across the plains of Astragalus, through Korea’s forests of Ginseng, to Aronia plantations, and finally to the wetlands of Centella asiatica—the “tiger herb.” As narrator, Li Ching-Yuen appears as the digital brand ambassador—an AI avatar of the historical figure.
Li Ching-Yuen, a legendary herbal expert in China, is said in historical accounts to have lived for more than two centuries. He devoted his life to the study and application of medicinal plants—including ginseng, polygonum, and goji berries—becoming a symbol of vitality and longevity. In the film, he guides viewers through the locations and explains the significance of each ingredient.
Every chapter was staged with a level of visual and dramatic depth that—without AI—would have required extensive logistics, precise weather planning, and strict timing around seasonal bloom periods. AI opened the door to flexible variations, new perspectives, and immediate dramaturgical adjustments.
Global scalability at the push of a button
Because Shòu Lè Kãng is distributed internationally, we produced multi-language versions while preserving the avatar’s lip movement and intonation. What would normally require separate shoots or heavy post-production was automated—without compromising quality.
AI as a partner, not a replacement
This production highlights a fundamental shift in modern media workflows: AI enables efficient and creative execution across a wide range of projects. The goal is to provide professional media creators with an innovative tool that turns ideas into reality faster, more versatilely, and more resource-efficiently—not to replace jobs. The creative team led not only the narrative concept, historical research on Li Ching-Yuen, and dramaturgical development, but also the full prompting workflow for images, video sequences, music, voice, and sound design. A common misconception is that productions of this calibre happen in a few clicks—when in reality they require deep expertise, precise control of AI tools, and interdisciplinary collaboration. Here, AI acted as a force multiplier—much like the transition from analog to digital photography.
