Serena ZhangCase study 01 / 03
Case study · Tencent Video · 2024

IP + AI: stepping inside the story

I designed and led a 0-to-1 AI product that lets fans keep living inside the shows they love: talking with the characters, unlocking new chapters and shaping their own endings.

AI product0 → 1Interactive storytellingCreator tools
My design scopeProduct logicUI / UXDataMonetization
Role
Product lead, end-to-end design
Team
14 people
Cadence
2-week sprints
Shipped on
Tencent Video, QQ, Yuanbao

Opening films for two original stories built on the platform

800Kusers across 16 AI characters
30M+conversation turns
37.5turns per user, vs. an industry average of about 30
18.37%of fans kept chatting after the finale
The problem

When the show ends, the love doesn't.

Tencent Video runs on premium IP and membership revenue, much like Netflix. Every show has a finale, but fans' feelings carry on, and they take them to Weibo and Xiaohongshu. In 2024 we asked: beyond watching, what can a streaming platform give its fans?

Show airs Finale Months after Fan emotion New story on platform The emotional gap

Illustrative. Our mission: use AI to fill this gap and extend the life of every IP.

The insight

Fans don't want to chat. They want more story.

01Fan interviews 02Comment and bullet-chat analysis 03Teardown of top AI companion apps
Open-chat companions
IP + AI stories
World
User-made premise, no shared world
The show's own world and characters
Direction
Drifts; users get lost and tired
Chapters and goals give every chat a purpose
Feel
Improvised plots feel fake
Writers keep characters true to the show
Ending
None
Branches and many endings, one per fan
A good story=Character×Plot

Character: AI agents that feel real. Plot: open storylines that break past the script.

Key decisions

How far to let the AI go

Decision 1

Bounded openness

Writers own the world and the key beats. Users choose the path.

GaveSome freedomGotCharacters that stay true, plots that hold, content that stays safe
Decision 2

IP first

We launched with characters from the platform's top shows.

GaveSpeed, under rights-holder constraintsGotA built-in audience and a cold-start solution
Decision 3

Writers train the AI

PMs and scriptwriters set characters, rules and quality bars together.

Built9 reusable prompt modules and an AI evaluation loopGotModel pass rate 57% → 83%
The system

One foundation, two products

Every capability in the foundation is a reusable prompt module, so a new IP never starts from zero.

Input

Platform assets

  • IP library
  • User behavior data
  • Hunyuan LLM
  • Model know-how
Consumer

Interactive open stories

  • IP character agents
  • Open storylines
  • Multi-modal
Creator

AI creation studio

  • 3-step creation
  • AI scripts
  • UGC tools
Foundation · product × model
  • AI art, BGM, voice
  • Guided replies
  • Role-play
  • Outcome judging
  • Plot continuation
  • Stats
To C

Fans

  • Tencent Video
  • Mini-program
  • QQ
  • Yuanbao
To B

Partners

  • Game studios
  • Creators
  • Production cos.
Discovery

Every card is a world

A story feed where each world is one tap away, and recommendation puts the right story in front of the right fan.

100+
original stories built with our creator studio
Story feed: a grid of original interactive stories, each with cover art, a one-line hook and an Enter button
Inside the story

Conversation with a purpose

A real session in Galaxy Hunter

Evidence screen: a locked notebook covered in clues
Evidence
Hand-drawn map investigation screen
Map search
A clue item, a videotape, unlocked as a story card
Clue card
Countdown challenge with a story card reward
Countdown
Character agentsStay true to the show
Chapter unlocksEvery chat has a goal
Branching plotsMany endings
Group chatSeveral characters, one scene
Multi-modalArt, BGM and voice
Guided repliesFor first-time AI users
Where fans find it

Built into the show, not a separate app

Lost You Forever show page with an AI Chat tab, and the discussion tab with a Chat with AI characters banner
In the show pageAn AI Chat tab and a banner in fan discussions
Xiangliu character page with a Go chat button and fan-made episodes
Character pageOne tap to chat, plus fan-made episodes
Search results for the show's AI chat and for the character name, each showing a Go chat card
SearchSearching the show or a character's name surfaces the chat card
Who the fans are

Young, loyal, and here for the love story

We profiled the fans chatting with Lost You Forever characters to tune each agent's voice, timing and story hooks.

Age

57% are 24 or younger

18 and under
31%
19–24
26.5%
25–30
13.5%
31–35
10.5%
36–40
7.3%
41–45
4.4%
46+
4.4%

Approximate, from Tencent Video age tags of AI chat users (97.7% tagged).

Conversation depth · Xiangliu

47% go past 10 turns

8.23%
1
26.35%
2–5
18.75%
6–10
26.42%
11–30
15.54%
31–99
4.47%
100–499
0.24%
500+

Share of users by number of private-chat turns with the Xiangliu agent.

When they chat · Xiangliu

Peaks early morning and late evening

1:006:0012:0018:0024:00

Chats per hour of day, thousands. Hover a bar for its value.

Hot phrases

They replay the love triangle

Fans to Xiangliu 我爱你I love you你喜欢小夭吗Do you like Xiaoyao?相柳大人Lord Xiangliu防风邶his alias, Fangfeng Bei老公hubby
Fans to Xiaoyao 你最想和谁相伴一生Who do you want to spend your life with?你喜欢相柳吗Do you like Xiangliu?你愿意嫁给涂山璟吗Would you marry Tushan Jing?

Most frequent messages, from chat keyword analysis.

Iteration

Two metrics, three shifts

Every two-week sprint was judged on two numbers.

Turns per usermotivation · industry ≈ 30
Next-day retentionstickiness · industry 40–50%
Break Up or Die: story intro with its cast, and the branching story map with an unlocked story card Billionaire Who Wants to Go Broke: story intro set in 1997 Hong Kong, and a live chat with a character Anna the Villainess: story intro with five characters, and a negotiation chat with a trust meter
Main screens across three original stories: story intro, branching map with story cards, and live chat with stats
SHIFT 1

Open the characters

Plots moved from one main line to many branches, driven by stats. Lighter presets let user choices decide where the story goes.

High emotion×High exploration×Light presets=Freedom
SHIFT 2

Open the plot

Three levels of AI continuation, each handing AI a bigger share of the writing while creators keep the frame.

AI writesCreator writes
SupplementaryAnna the Villainess
Adds scene detail, thoughts and action to a fixed plot
ImaginativeBreak Up or Die
Drives the plot inside the creator's frame, with random events
Game masterGalaxy Hunter
Creator sets start and end; AI writes the journey for each player
SHIFT 3

Open creation

Female-oriented IPs like Lost You Forever have huge fan-fiction communities. AI tools let fans build new episodes around official characters, and players turn into creators.

IP characters AI studio Fan episodes Players play · share · remix players → creators
Creator studio

An immersive story in three steps

Before: script → mechanics → art → audio → QA

STEP 1Your ideaPremise, lead, relationships
STEP 2AI writes the plotBranches on a free canvas
STEP 3AI adds art and musicScenes, BGM, sound

Building a story end to end: idea, branching canvas, AI-written scenes, art and music.

Results

Fans stayed. Creators came without incentives.

800Kusers across 16 AI characters from 5 IPs
30M+conversation turns
37.5turns per user; the top 10% reached 67
18.37%kept chatting after the finale
2–3×deeper conversations in generation 2
70creator stories in month one, with zero incentives

18.37% is post-finale retention: unique users still chatting after the finale ÷ all chat users, across two IPs, through December.

Reflection

What I'd carry forward

Mechanics beat models

Users stayed because chapters, branches and outcomes gave conversation a purpose.

Writers are part of the model

Story quality has to be defined by people who understand stories, then encoded into prompts and evaluation.

Evaluate from day one

Next time I'd build the automated evaluation loop before launch, not after.