The rise of AI-generated micro-dramas

In late October, a content creator known by the online handle A Yan refreshed his dashboard on Douyin (the Chinese version of TikTok) and watched his videos surpass a cumulative 10 million likes.

Just six months earlier, he had been an ordinary office worker with a civil engineering background, spending his days in foreign trade and being largely unaware of film jargon like "dolly zoom." He began experimenting with using AI to make videos by writing prompts himself, but for two months he produced almost nothing usable. The breakthrough came when he switched to OiiOii.ai, an AI animation agent team that turns ideas into characters, scenes, storyboards and short films, launched by Shanghai-based firm Shanghai Tianma Xingkong Technology. Instead of wrestling with technical language, he could simply describe a feeling or scene: "I want a shot where swords are summoned—hundreds of them—attacking monsters." The agent would automatically translate that into cinematic language and generate the sequence.

Soon, he was building an entire mythological universe with names known to almost all households in China. Sun Wukong, the rebellious Monkey King from the 16th-century Chinese classic Journey to the West, fought alongside Yang Jian, a three-eyed warrior god, and Nezha, the boy deity famous for battling dragons in Chinese folklore. Their adventures unfolded in landscapes inspired by The Classic of Mountains and Seas, an ancient Chinese text that blends mythology, geography and fantastical creatures in ways often compared to a bestiary or fantasy world-building guide.

The result was a series of short videos titled Through the Shan Hai Jing or Through the Classic of Mountains and Seas. It took a month to produce and cost just over 10,000 yuan ($1,500). Within two weeks of release, his follower count exploded from the tens of thousands to 1 million. The most popular episode drew more than 4.5 million likes.

In 2026, AI has lowered the barrier to making short dramas to the floor. Ordinary people with no film background can describe a scene in plain language, sometimes pulling in millions of likes. But as "everyone can be a director" becomes reality, the deeper questions are starting to come into focus.

On September 1, a set of measures on the development and management of micro-dramas, released by the National Radio and Television Administration, went into effect. It is the country's first departmental regulation dedicated specifically to the sector. The rules aim to establish a comprehensive, tiered regulatory framework covering filing, review and release. At the same time, the measures encourage broad public participation in micro-drama creation, and seek to stimulate the innovative and creative vitality of the sector.

From hobby to business

For A Yan, the most immediate change was financial. He did the math: He began making AI videos in April, and the revenue from his first video was enough to cover the cost of generating its content. After the second video took off, Douyin approached him with an exclusive partnership deal. "Once I signed, the costs were basically covered," he told digital media outlet Meiri Renwu. By May, advertisers and platform marketing teams were contacting him with offers.

The economics were startlingly simple. A single three-minute episode cost roughly 1,000 to 2,000 yuan ($150-$300) to produce. A Yan said he now earns several times more each month than he did at his office job.

After his videos exploded in popularity, A Yan told his employer he wanted to quit and focus on AI filmmaking full time. His boss persuaded him to stay, offering a flexible arrangement that no longer required him to work regular office hours. He could handle tasks remotely and spend most of his time producing videos at home. His boss has since started learning to use AI tools as well, and occasionally asks A Yan for advice.

According to the China Netcasting Services Association, around 128,000 micro-dramas were released across the industry in the first quarter of 2026, of which approximately 122,000 were AI-generated, accounting for more than 95 percent of the total. In the second quarter, 239,000 micro-dramas were released in China, including 86,000 live-action dramas and 153,000 AI-generated dramas.

Platforms are also investing in AI content creation. Short-video and livestreaming platform Kuaishou has launched its AI Creator Season, offering cash rewards and increased exposure to high-quality AI-generated content. Hongguo Short Drama, a micro-drama streaming platform owned by ByteDance, the parent company of TikTok and Douyin, has launched an AI creation program with 3 million yuan ($450,000) in guaranteed funding, including a top award of 1 million yuan ($150,000) for a single project. Tencent's Fire Dragon AI comic-drama competition offers a total prize pool of 1 million yuan.

Challenges ahead

Although AI has lowered the barriers to producing micro-dramas, many of the titles gaining traction still suffer from obvious flaws. Viewers frequently complain about inconsistencies: A protagonist's face changes from one shot to the next, a bracelet keeps changing color, a weapon switches from an arrow to a sword, or a character's name is repeatedly mispronounced. Basic logic often goes awry, too. Characters take showers fully clothed, receive acupuncture through their clothes, or find a steering wheel in the back seat of a car.

"Low-quality content is also lowering the bar for what audiences expect," He Ting, a Shanghai-based animation artist, told Beijing Review, adding that the flood of poorly made micro-dramas is dulling viewers' appreciation for quality content and weakening their demand for better productions. If this continues, she warned, the overall quality of the industry could suffer.

She also points to a deeper problem: AI-generated micro-dramas rely heavily on vast libraries of online fiction and hit live-action dramas to train their models, resulting in formulaic storytelling. In China, plots revolve around reincarnation, powerful CEOs, revenge and immortal cultivation. Overseas, werewolves and vampires dominate. "AI has made it easier to produce a story, but harder to answer a more fundamental question: What stories are actually worth telling?" she said.

Meanwhile, for most creators, lower production costs have not necessarily made it easier to turn a profit. According to DataEye, a research firm that tracks the digital entertainment industry, AI-generated micro-dramas are far cheaper to produce than live-action ones, with production costs reduced by roughly 90 percent. But making these dramas is only part of the expense: The cost of attracting viewers has more than doubled compared with the same period last year, while revenue per 1,000 views has fallen by half compared with the second half of 2025.

Copyright is another major challenge. Experts say challenges remain in determining violations involving AI-generated face swaps, voice imitation and other copyright infringement. These cases raise complex questions about personal rights and intellectual property.

According to Zhang Ping, a professor at Peking University Law School, a key difficulty is the lack of a clear standard for identifying AI-generated content. It requires judgments about degrees of similarity, and no uniform standard has yet been established.