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This week I watched a short film called Candy, and I was so intrigued and moved by it, and so impressed by what you can create with AI now. It was made by a creator who goes by DiDi_OK, using ByteDance's Seedance 2.5 video model, and it's a sci-fi story where people start turning into candy after acts of violence.
Candy, by DiDi_OK. Created with Seedance 2.5 via BytePlus.
I'm blown away by what an independent creator can make with these tools now. The barrier to entry is learning the tools and paying for credits, so it does cost something, but they're available to someone with talent and an idea, at home in their pyjamas. It was one of the very first things I noticed about AI: it's the great equaliser. That's how I feel about it.
Creativity and AI, with care
I have close friends in quite influential creative industries, and I appreciate what a touchy subject creativity and AI is, given that lots of models have been trained on their content. The IP issues are real, and I respect the people raising them.
When Seedance 2.0 came out in February, people used it to make clips of famous actors and studio characters, and Disney, Paramount and the Motion Picture Association sent ByteDance cease and desist letters. ByteDance added safeguards, and in August it signed an agreement with the MPA on guardrails to protect intellectual property. The MPA says Seedance 2.5, the version behind Candy, reflects those protections, and Candy is an original story with its own characters.
Alongside all of that, AI is now opening up new ways for people to express themselves.
Putting myself in the story
This week I made my own film with an original character: me. It's the opening film for the International Superyacht Society's Leadership Series in Monaco, where I became a colossal giant battling a kraken in the harbour. In the AI risk briefing I made for the same event, my avatar and Jeremy the kraken then sit on the same couch talking about it as a cast, basically as actors who'd appeared in the movie. You can put people and consistent characters in scenes, and I love the storytelling.
The opening film for the ISS Leadership Series, Monaco 2026, by Southern Sky AI. See more on the Southern Sky Studio page.
Where the great equaliser started
My first experience with AI was in late 2022, when I was trying to help my mum with a government report. When she saw what came back, she said, "That's exactly what I was trying to say." In that moment, I felt this was a very transformative technology.
To see someone who has struggled to express themselves on paper use the technology to participate fully in society was very moving. Plenty of people haven't had the same educational opportunities, or have had different life circumstances, and I can see how, if this is given to the people who have been historically left out of the economic markets, it would change the world.
Imagine if you were able to teach any child from any country, whatever their social status or access to resources. The world will change and tip on its head, and I think for the better. Lots of people want to use this technology for good. You can turn it on our biggest societal problems, and on environmental issues. It's supercharging whatever we want to do, and it's levelling the playing field.
What this opens up for your business
Hopefully you can see the opportunities here for your own business. Video is so powerful for connection and for sharing ideas, and it goes well beyond marketing: onboarding material for new crew, safety drills, engaging content for clients, client communications, and anything else that lifts your brand, your communication and your engagement. When Wyzowl asked people how they'd most like to learn about a product or service, 63 percent chose a short video and 12 percent chose a text-based article (Wyzowl, 2026).
I'm choosy about digital avatars of real people. I did use mine for my AI risk briefing in Monaco this week, because I was talking about AI transparency obligations, so it fit the bill. For explainers and things like that, I appear in person, because I feel it's all about trust. If you're communicating with your intended clients or your community, you want to establish trust by being authentic and showing up yourself.
For campaigns, we've been creating characters with Southern Sky Studio. For UglySweaters.com, a recurring cast, including a Sitting Duck and a Chill Capybara, connects the knitwear designs with short films and social content. For the Asia-Pacific Superyacht Association, we made a welcome film in which a digital avatar of Suzy Rayment, APSA's Managing Director, speaks to members in Japanese, Indonesian and Mandarin. If you run a charter company, a marina or a shipyard, you can tell your story on film the same way, with characters your audience comes to know.
Offcuts and scraps
I've found it hard starting with nothing. Given a few resources, a few wood offcuts or scraps of fabric, I'll find a way to turn them into something fantastic. That's how I operate. I take scraps of knowledge, I take clues, and I find the patterns and put the clues together to create something bigger. I think AI removes the empty page for people, and it starts to give them an opportunity.
AI is a performance enhancer. If you use the tools well, it makes creative people more creative and organised people more organised, and it brings out qualities we all have hidden deep within us. It can't substitute for experience or understanding. That's where the gaps show, where it starts to look like slop and rubbish, and where it stops helping you.
Candy came from DiDi_OK's skill and imagination, and more than 200,000 people watched it in just over two weeks. I love how much this technology can be used to engage people and bring them together.
That's the part of Southern Sky Studio I love most: helping a business take its story, its people and its ideas, and turn them into films and characters people want to watch.
Kristina Agustin is the founder of Southern Sky AI, an AI strategy and deployment company for the superyacht and marine industry.
Further Reading
- DiDi_OK (2026). Candy: What If Violence Turned You Into Candy? AI short film, created with Seedance 2.5. YouTube, 10 September 2026.
- Southern Sky AI (2026). ISS Leadership Series Monaco 2026 opening film. Southern Sky Studio.
- NBC News (2026). ByteDance responds to copyright infringement concerns with Seedance 2.0. February 2026.
- Motion Picture Association and ByteDance (2026). MPA and ByteDance announce global agreement to protect intellectual property on AI video and image generation models. 17 August 2026.
- Wyzowl (2026). Video Marketing Statistics 2026. Survey of 266 marketers and consumers, late 2025.
