An artificial intelligence music video titled Guolai Ren crossed over 124 million total views across Chinese social platforms by late October 2026, featuring historical and mythological figures including Du Fu, Su Shi, Liu Bang, and Sun Wukong discussing modern urban stresses like renting and workplace pressure.
The Bottom Line
- The AI-generated rap video cost creator Wang Kunzhe a few thousand yuan in direct tool subscriptions and compute credits while amassing over 124 million cross-platform views.
- Industry analysts attribute the viral resonance to emotional resonance rather than technical polish, noting that the project pulls historical figures out of traditional educational pedestals to match modern anxieties.
- Despite the ease of copying templates via open creation canvases, industry observers caution that authentic human experience and narrative judgment cannot be replicated by automated software.
How Wang Kunzhe Built the AI Viral Hit
The project emerged from the workflow of Wang Kunzhe, who spent over a decade working in traditional imaging, news production, and commercial videography before turning his focus to generative AI tools. Operating independently, Wang mapped out the structural framework, lyrical themes, and emotional pacing himself, utilizing AI exclusively to handle rhyming variations, background generation, and execution tasks. The core narrative assigns specific verses to historical figures chosen for their historical struggles. Tang dynasty poet Du Fu opens the piece, tackling the trials of moving and urban renting to instantly connect with contemporary audiences facing housing pressures. Song dynasty literatus Su Shi follows, addressing career stagnation and middle-aged displacement, while Liu Bang anchors the backend with a message about late-blooming perseverance. The total direct production span required only three to four days, relying heavily on pre-existing asset characters developed across earlier short-form rap battle experiments.
Data and Platform Metrics of the AI Generation Wave
| Platform / Metric | Reported Figure |
|---|---|
| Douyin Platform Views | Approx. 75,000,000 |
| WeChat Channels Views | Approx. 45,000,000 |
| Direct Production Costs | Several thousand yuan (subscriptions and compute credits) |
The Tension Between Technological Lowering of Barriers and Creative Judgment
The phenomenal traction of Guolai Ren sparked broader debates regarding the sustainability of automated creation and copyright boundaries. Following the release, Wang published the project's foundational canvas assets on LibTV to allow other creators to study or replicate the workflow, prompting industry discussions on whether viral hits can be mass-produced through copy-pasting prompt engineering. When journalists tested the workflow to generate a custom 5-second sequence featuring the poet Li Bai at a microphone, the resulting output generated a sword-wielding figure rather than a stage performance, demonstrating that automated prompts fail to duplicate human editorial intent reliably.
Wang continues to refine his methodology, emphasizing that while technical tools serve as powerful amplifiers for personal inspiration, the enduring success of digital storytelling relies entirely on the creator’s real-world observation and empathy.
