When robots took centre stage at this year’s Spring Festival Gala, it looked like a novelty slot. Just days later, it’s starting to look less like a gimic and more like a genre category being born. Chinese robotics company AGIBOT (智元机器人) has staged what it describes as the world’s first large-scale, all-robot variety show, Robot Wonderful Night (机器人奇妙夜).
This is not a gala show. It’s only timed as such. Nor is this a one-off stunt. Zhiyuan has been clear about its intent. Robot Wonderful Night is not a one-off stunt but a long-term IP, with plans for touring and commercial licensing. Robotics, in other words, is being repositioned from industrial capability to cultural product.
The show was streamed live across multiple Chinese platforms including Mango TV (芒果 TV), the official AGIBOT channels and the channel of Peng Zhihui (稚晖君), a prominent figure behind AGIBOT and something of a whiz in the Chinese tech world. Short-vid content and livestreams went to mobile through Bilibili, Douyin, and others.
The show itself involved more than 200 robots in 12 performances spanning martial arts, magic, dance and sketch comedy, streamed across multiple platforms and quickly fuelling what netizens called a wave of ‘cyber New Year vibes (赛博年味).’
The AGIBOT all-robot variety show: a wider picture
But AGIBOT aren’t the only ones putting out cyber New Year vibes. Days earlier, NetEase Cloud Music and NetEase launched their own AI Spring Festival Gala – a 15-minute, mem-dense ‘short gala’ powered by generative tools, from songwriting to animated cultural relics.
Taken together, these parallel productions suggest something larger. Spring Festival remains China’s most emotionally loaded media moment. It’s always been so, and the story of brands using that time to push message or product isn’t new. But cyber new year vibes are – and they look like they’re here to stay.
