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Visionary leap into AI anime tech
Tech

A visionary leap into AI anime creation

How CreateAI has transformed autonomous driving expertise into Animon.ai, a platform bringing anime production to everyone

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CreateAI’s new Beijing facility houses 130 Vicon VK26  optical cameras and is described as Asia’s largest and most advanced motion capture studio.
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A team once known for building autonomous driving intelligence is now using the same technical discipline to unlock new creative possibilities. Their work has produced Animon.ai, which CreateAI presents as the World’s First AI Video Generator built specifically to generate anime-style videos from a single image or idea.

CreateAI President and CEO Cheng Lu says the company’s AI tools, new studio and research will give creators greater freedom and precision in digital content production.
CreateAI President and CEO Cheng Lu says the company’s AI tools, new studio and research will give creators greater freedom and precision in digital content production.
“We haven’t left AI. We have redirected world-class autonomous driving capabilities into AIGC,” says Cheng Lu, CreateAI’s President and CEO. “Our mission is to give creators the freedom and precision to bring new ideas to life.”
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Today, Animon.ai is the clearest expression of that vision.

A strategic pivot powered by an elite AI team 

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CreateAI’s advantage stems from the strength of the team behind it. The engineers who once built perception, prediction and control systems for autonomous vehicles are now applying the accumulated deep-learning discipline to creative models.

This shift has enabled the development of models such as Anicut Pro 1.6, a model capable of delivering high performance across both realistic and anime-stylized outputs. The same technical foundation supports Animon.ai, allowing it to compete with far larger global players.

That competitiveness is already visible. Animon.ai was recently ranked 21st out of 40 top image-to-video models in the Artificial Analysis Image-to-Video Leaderboard, placing it alongside industry leaders and providing a benchmark of its capabilities on the global stage.

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Animon.ai: anime production in a browser

Animon.ai is what CreateAI envisions as a way to make anime production accessible to anyone, whether a hobbyist, influencer or professional creator.

Users simply upload an image or a text prompt and the system generates an anime-style video clip, complete with motion, expression and environmental detail. What once required teams of animators, specialised training and weeks of production time can now be created on a laptop.

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CreateAI describes this as “anime production in a browser”.

The product lowers traditional barriers of cost, time and skill, inviting a new generation of fans to participate not only as viewers but as creators.

For professionals, the platform offers rapid visualisation and iteration. For enthusiasts, it opens a world that was previously out of reach. And for all creators, it offers the chance to produce high-quality anime content without studios, pipelines or complex software.

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CreateAI’s Animon.ai platform allows users to upload an image or a text prompt and generate short anime-style video sequences without specialist training or professional software.
CreateAI’s Animon.ai platform allows users to upload an image or a text prompt and generate short anime-style video sequences without specialist training or professional software.
How AI anime generation works

Traditional anime production requires frame-by-frame craftsmanship, with detailed drawings and time-intensive workflows. AI changes that process.

Animon.ai’s underlying models are trained on large datasets of artwork, movement and stylistic patterns. When given an image, the system interprets shapes, colour and composition, then predicts how characters and scenes should move across a sequence of frames.

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The result is a fluid clip that can include gestures, camera movement and animated backgrounds. Users do not need to draw individual frames or understand animation pipelines. AI handles the visual motion, while the creator provides the idea.

This approach dramatically reduces production time and allows more voices to participate in a medium long dominated by specialist studios.

Actors in mocap suits perform inside the 2,000-square metre space, supplying high-precision movement data for game, film and animation projects that require realistic character motion.
Actors in mocap suits perform inside the 2,000-square metre space, supplying high-precision movement data for game, film and animation projects that require realistic character motion.
A supporting ecosystem for every creator 
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While Animon.ai serves indie creators and online communities, CreateAI has also invested in an ecosystem to support larger productions. 

The company has recently opened what it describes as Asia’s largest and most advanced motion capture studio, located at the China Film Group Digital Film Production Base in Beijing. 

The 2,000-square metre facility houses 130 Vicon VK26 optical cameras with 26.2-megapixel resolution and is capable of capturing high-precision body and facial performances for films, games and animation.

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Research advances also reinforce CreateAI’s credentials. Two papers accepted at ICCV 2025, one of the field’s most respected conferences, introduced new techniques for layer-level animation control and efficient anime-style translation. These innovations support both the professional production pipeline and the consumer-facing platform.

The studio, research pipeline and generative models represent a spectrum of tools for creators of all levels. Animon.ai offers fast, accessible anime content creation, the company’s AI research drives next-generation creative models, and the motion capture studio provides AAA-quality performance capture for larger productions.

CreateAI has also acquired adaptation rights for two major IPs, The Three-Body Problem and Heroes of Jin Yong, in line with its ambition to apply its technology to large-scale cultural properties.

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A vision for the future of anime creation

The opportunity for CreateAI is not limited to technology. The company is opening the door for millions of creators around the world. 

Cheng says the goal is simple: “We want creators to realise their ideas with more freedom and speed. Our goal is to help people create expressive characters, rich stories and new worlds without the constraints that have held animation back for years.”

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As AI becomes a partner in the creative process, the cultural impact could be far reaching as creators gain the flexibility to participate, share their stories and shape the content they care about without compromising creativity.

With Animon.ai leading this shift, CreateAI is helping to build a future where the power to animate belongs to everyone.
 

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