Gazprom-Media Holding released its first animated cartoon cast based on artificial intelligence

Gazprom-Media Holding’s D.lab neuroproduction studio, in cooperation with GPM Radio, has developed and released its first AI-animated audio podcast—the Detskoe Radio cartoon The New Adventures of Vesnushka and Kipyatosha. The first eight-minute episode is already available on RUTUBE, VK Video and Detskoe Radio’s social networks. This is a fundamentally new type of content for radio, that can expand its audience and commercial opportunities.

Cartoon cast, created on the basis of artificial intelligence, is an innovative and new product for radio. D.lab technology provides radio broadcasters with the opportunity to repackage audio content, attract new audiences and leverage additional monetization tools. An episode of the podcast The New Adventures of Vesnushka and Kipyatosha was used for the premiere series. It is one of the three most popular on Detskoe Radio. Over the past year, the episodes were played over 51.5 million times on various digital platforms.

As a technological media, radio is constantly experimenting, trying different types of information presentation, and anticipating and staying ahead of trends. A few years ago, we transformed on-air programs into audio podcasts, and they were incredibly popular, becoming one of the most popular digital formats. Now, using the power of neural networks, we have turned the podcast into a cartoon. No one has ever done this on the radio before, but initial feedback shows that the product has captured the audience’s interest. The precedent also promises to become a point of reference for future collaborations with movie distribution companies.

Vadim Tereshchuk CEO of GPM Radio

The Detskoe Radio cartoon cast is the first major project of the D.lab neuroproduction studio, which Gazprom-Media Holding launched in September 2023. The video sequence was created using the studio’s own hybrid solution, based on open source and commercial artificial intelligence models, and additionally trained and combined to produce multimedia content. D.lab’s solution increases the profitability of animation production by an average of 2–4 times compared to traditional cycles due to a more balanced ratio of speed, quality and cost of processes.

Nobody drew anything here—we just had an audio track. The most difficult thing was getting through to the neural networks that the polka-dot dress on the heroine and freckles on her face needed to be in every frame, and we had to work on empathy. We’re not going to compete with classic animation. Classics are always a piece product, with longer and more expensive production. We have developed a tool for creating additional content. We managed to reach a very attractive ratio of production speed, cost and quality of the final product.

Eduard Maas Head of D.lab

The cartoon cast production cycle has several stages: character development through Text-to-Image models, Text-to-Image retraining for stable character playback, generation of graphics and animation by Image-to-Video models, as well as post-production—editing, articulation refinement, image synchronization with the audio track, and improving the quality of the animation.

The sphere of animation is expanding its boundaries and becoming part of different types of content, comments Albina Mukhametzyanova, CEO and general producer of YARKO animation company.

Nothing like this has ever been done on the radio, so we are doubly happy that audio content is becoming more technological. Today, neural networks are making some stages of project production much easier. This is just a toolkit, and by no means a replacement for industry specialists. New technologies make it possible to reduce routine, increase the speed of development, and take a broader view of the creative task. However, the process still involves the participation of artists and other specialists to introduce revisions and make characters and worlds more three-dimensional and understandable to the audience.

Albina Mukhametzyanova CEO, and general producer of YARKO animation company

RUTUBE, D.lab, YARKO and Detskoe Radio, as part of GPM Radio, are part of Gazprom-Media Holding.

Gazprom-Media Holding released its first animated cartoon cast based on artificial intelligence

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