The CCTV Horse Year Spring Festival Gala, themed "Steeds Galloping, Momentum Unstoppable," commenced at 8 PM on the 16th, marking the peak of this year's Spring Festival AI marketing competition among major tech firms. A sketch titled "Grandma's Favorite" featured a scene where a grandmother, instead of greeting her grandson, first raised her phone to take a picture and asked a question to her device, leading to the AI assistant Doubao making a subtle appearance in the gala. In another segment, celebrities including Ning Li, Hu Bing, and Qin Lan transformed into the "Twelve Flower Gods," where a point of a finger or a stroke of a brush caused butterflies to land, osmanthus flowers to fall, and blossoms to emerge from the brush tip. As the exclusive AI cloud partner for the gala, Volcengine enabled this accessible technology through its technical support.

AI elements are extending from the gala stage to user interactions in daily life scenarios. Industry sources indicate that during this Spring Festival, major companies like ByteDance, Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, Meituan, and JD.com are focusing their marketing efforts on participating in various regional galas, hosting themed events, distributing red envelopes, and exploring new AI interactive features tailored to their products. This Spring Festival AI traffic battle may be just one of many campaigns for major tech firms this year, with the race for dominance in the AI application sector expected to accelerate further in 2026. Competition among "national-level" applications like Doubao, Qianwen, and Yuanbao is also anticipated to intensify.

Doubao frequently appeared in prominent roles during the CCTV gala. In the sketch "Grandma's Favorite," a humorous detail involved the grandmother's immediate reaction to her grandson's visit. ByteDance was the first major player to initiate this year's Spring Festival AI competition. On December 28, 2025, it was announced at a CCTV event that Volcengine had become the exclusive AI cloud partner for the 2026 Spring Festival Gala. An AI industry insider noted that Doubao's participation in the gala resembles TikTok's past strategy of leveraging the gala to achieve national-level application status.

ByteDance's technical support for the gala programs primarily involved four areas: First, the Doubao large model assisted in stage art creation. Second, in embodied intelligence, it enhanced robot expression fluency and intelligence. Third, the Volcengine Ark platform served as the underlying infrastructure, supporting user interactions on the Doubao app during the gala, with the main challenge being handling peak computational demands. Fourth, Volcengine utilized the Doubao speech recognition model to provide real-time subtitles for the gala live stream on Douyin.

In supporting stage art, Volcengine, using Doubao model technology, was deeply involved in the creative conception and visual presentation of several gala programs, collaborating with CCTV directors and production teams to explore the boundaries of generative AI in large-scale stage productions. The AI and large model capabilities used throughout the creative process were based on Doubao models, with Seedance2.0 providing deep customization for multiple programs. Volcengine's intelligent video cloud enhancement service also ensured the gala's high-specification 4K, 50fps video output.

For instance, in the creative song performance "Praising the Flower Gods," AI technology customized unique "one person, one scene" Chinese visual spectacles for 12 celebrities from various fields like dance, opera, and film, depicting the cyclical Chinese philosophical concept of "spring, summer, autumn, winter, and another spring." This program demonstrated Seedance 2.0's fine control capabilities, precisely following instructions to manage complex visual changes while maintaining consistency under high aesthetic standards, marking an advancement from mere generation to precise control. The technical challenges involved high detail density, including close-ups, subtle changes, and demanding aesthetics, such as the slow blooming of flowers with intricate textures, layers, and light variations, where any model instability or visual distortion would be magnified. At the gala, audiences interacted with virtually generated osmanthus flowers, which scattered upon a light touch. ByteDance's "Shidian Guji" app also provided content support for this program, blending cultural heritage with technological presentation.

In embodied intelligence, several branded robots delivered surprising performances. Volcengine, via the Doubao model, endowed these robots with language understanding and expression capabilities for smarter, more natural interaction. For example, for Unitree robots, the Doubao model provided efficient semantic understanding and intelligent dialogue, accurately interpreting complex natural language commands and delivering context-appropriate responses.

On the product front, the Doubao large model 2.0 was released on February 14. This month, ByteDance also launched the video generation model Seedance 2.0 and the image model Seedream 5.0 Lite, garnering significant attention. Doubao 2.0 is systematically optimized for large-scale production environments, leveraging efficient inference, multimodal understanding, and complex instruction execution to better handle real-world tasks. Notably, a "Doubao Interpretation" segment was featured below the gala live stream, providing real-time textual explanations of the deeper meanings behind some performances. For example, in the Yibin, Sichuan segment, it highlighted the symbolism of fish swimming alongside performers. Additionally, Doubao announced interactive activities, including giving away over 100,000 tech gifts integrated with its large model and cash red envelopes during the gala.

Beyond ByteDance's prominent role, Kuaishou, Xiaohongshu, and Bilibili also participated in the CCTV gala. Kuaishou presented the gala through live streams, on-demand content, and short videos, also allowing viewers to replay past gala programs. Xiaohongshu served as the exclusive real-person notes interaction community, distributing three rounds of "New Year Little Red Boxes" during the live stream. Bilibili was the exclusive bullet comment video platform, enabling users to engage in real-time discussions via comments; this year's gala also featured UP主 participation for the first time.

Significantly, the AI traffic competition among giants like Alibaba, Tencent, Baidu, Meituan, and JD.com began well before New Year's Eve. As early as February 1, Tencent launched its "Go for Yuanbao, Share 1 Billion" activity, officially kicking off the Spring Festival AI traffic war. Tencent's Chairman and CEO Pony Ma expressed hope that this 1 billion yuan initiative would "recreate the moment of the WeChat red envelope 11 years ago." Furthermore, Tencent introduced its AI "big move," Yuanbao Pai, leveraging its strengths to open a new AI social track. The company is conducting an AI social experiment, integrating its various services into Yuanbao. On February 10, Tencent Entertainment also hosted a special AI-themed gala.

Alibaba's recent "Order Milk Tea with One Sentence via AI" campaign gained significant popularity, achieving over 1 million milk tea orders through Qianwen in under three hours. The company invested 3 billion yuan to initiate a "Spring Festival Treat Plan," connecting its AI assistant with ecosystem businesses like Taobao, Fliggy, and Freshippo to demonstrate AI's capability in completing "eat, drink, and have fun" transaction loops. During the Spring Festival movie season, "buying movie tickets with one sentence" may become the next high-frequency scenario. This plan represents Alibaba's largest investment in a Spring Festival activity historically and the highest among this year's major AI campaigns. Meanwhile, the Qianwen app exclusively sponsored the Horse Year galas on Dragon TV, Zhejiang TV, Jiangsu TV, and Henan TV. The app also participated in these galas, bringing AI capabilities like video generation, image recognition, and Q&A into programs and interactions. For example, during the Henan TV gala broadcast on February 14, Qianwen was deeply involved in AI creation for segments like "Ten Thousand Horses Galloping"; dancer Yang Liping interacted with Qianwen during the inspiration phase for her work "Blossoming Wealth." Additionally, Qianwen featured a "Ask Qianwen, Learn Chinese Culture" segment in the lower-left corner, explaining program-related knowledge such as peony flower language and the origin of Cuju.

Baidu's Horse Year Spring Festival red envelope activity totaled 500 million yuan, with individual red envelopes reaching up to 10,000 yuan, and integrated its Wenxin assistant into the red envelope system. Baidu App also appeared as the "Chief AI Partner" on Beijing TV's gala. Baidu Maps launched a "Search 'Gala' on Baidu Maps to Grab 200 Million Red Envelopes" campaign and supported the Tianjin TV Crosstalk Gala.

Meituan upgraded its "Ask Xiaotuan" AI butler on February 12. When users pose local lifestyle questions, "Ask Xiaotuan" can rapidly conduct deep thinking, gather merchant and service information with secondary verification, combine real user reviews, and provide accurately matched, tradable options. Its Spring Festival section also offers various consumption vouchers for optimal deals across scenarios like delivery, instant shopping, and dine-in. JD.com recently hosted the "World's First Robot Gala," featuring robots performing acts like "Thousand-Hand Guanyin" and lion dances, with live stream giveaways for robot trial opportunities. It also launched a "Home Appliances & Furniture Gala Red Envelope" activity, where searching "gala red envelope" in the JD App allows users to share over 1 million tech gifts, with chances to win items for "0 yuan." Beyond the CCTV gala, Kuaishou sponsored the Liaoning TV gala and coordinated with over 20 provincial and municipal Spring Festival galas.

The past year set the tone for continuous AI application evolution, starting with the emergence of DeepSeek early in the year. Tech giants like ByteDance, Alibaba, and Tencent subsequently advanced across computing infrastructure, model layers, and application layers, with products like the Qianwen app, Quark AI glasses, and Doubao phones becoming highlights, while star products emerged in various vertical sectors. Based on this, analysts suggest that major firms will continue to accelerate their land grab in 2026. However, Yuan Xucong, Vice President and Chief AI Analyst at Head-Leopard Research Institute, notes that this acceleration is selective, focusing primarily on application directions that can clearly deliver business value. Other industry insiders believe that while heavy marketing spending is a proven effective strategy, user retention depends not only on marketing but also on the practicality of product features and genuine capabilities.

Reflecting these considerations, several companies are focusing on the long-term value demonstrated by this marketing push. For example, Alibaba stated that this Spring Festival, Qianwen aims to cultivate user habits of "turning to AI for tasks," offering a new consumption experience for the AI era. On February 15, Wu Jia, President of Qianwen's C-end Business Group, mentioned that whether AI becomes a traffic entry point or if such a form even persists is uncertain, but the direction of integrating AI into users' daily work and life remains unchanged. The head of the "Doubao Celebrates New Year" project expressed hopes that tech gift packs would let more people experience the conveniences brought by large model development and inspire greater attention and participation in technological innovation, bringing more科技成果 into daily life. A Meituan representative stated that the pre-Spring Festival upgrade of "Ask Xiaotuan" primarily addresses genuine user pain points in local services during the holiday, helping them efficiently find needed, verifiable, tradable, and better-priced options to reduce potential disappointments.

Notably, on February 13, the State Administration for Market Regulation summoned platform enterprises including Alibaba, Douyin, Baidu, Tencent, JD.com, Meituan, and Taobao Quick Purchase, urging strict compliance with laws such as the Anti-Unfair Competition Law, Price Law, Consumer Rights Protection Law, and E-commerce Law. The regulator called on these firms to proactively assume responsibility, further standardize promotional practices, avoid various forms of "internal卷-style" competition, jointly maintain a fair market environment, and promote innovation and healthy development in the platform economy.

This AI traffic battle marks the first major campaign of the year for tech giants. How AI applications will develop rapidly under healthy and orderly conditions in 2026 remains a key area for ongoing observation.