Against the backdrop of the 300-billion-yuan pet economy, has the business track of AI-powered pet content creators become viable?
"Uncle, I'm already missing you!" These soft, baby-like words coming from a kitten named Molly have recently gone viral, "brainwashing" many netizens who love watching short pet videos.
In the videos created by the content creator @PiaoLili, there are two AI-generated kittens, Piaopiao and Molly. The former is the older sister, and the latter is the younger sister. The account initially focused on AI cute pet videos. After adding the "Family Visit Special" series, Piaopiao's older brother, the orange cat Blue, appeared, and the video traffic skyrocketed. Currently, on the Douyin platform alone, the account has only released 14 videos but has accumulated 178,000 followers and nearly 2 million likes.
If you are already a fan of pet videos, you must have encountered a group of "talking" little animals in the past two years: in the @MaoZiQi account, a white cat and an orange cat make braised pork and set up stalls to apply phone screen protectors; the little orange cat from @YunMao's Life Philosophy takes the subway to work and works overtime to revise plans; there are also Bichon Frises transformed into ancient-style princesses staging palace drama comebacks, and Schnauzers wearing suits and riding in nice cars acting as domineering CEOs — without using real kittens or dogs for on-location filming, relying solely on AI-generated visuals and creative short video scripts, a wave of AI pet content creators have risen rapidly.
In the early days, the application of AI in pet videos was mainly focused on making small animals say "Mom" or putting them in "Nezha" costumes, which gradually evolved into serialized videos with storylines, "personalities", and emotional support. As AI video generation technology has become increasingly mature, in addition to top creators, a large number of AI pet accounts with lower traffic have also entered the market, trying to get a share of the pie. A complete "assembly line" from script generation, image production to batch updates and commercial monetization has spawned a brand-new track at the intersection of the 300-billion-yuan pet economy and the AI micro-drama boom.
It's not hard to see that top accounts that want to grab traffic in this crowded track generally share some common traits: serialized stories and stable "cat personalities", with details so realistic that viewers forget they are AI, and anthropomorphic emotions that are perfectly captured. More importantly, each episode has a complete storyline and universal emotional resonance, making up for the regret that "fur babies" cannot speak. Whether they are pet owners or people who love small animals, viewers have found pure "cyber companionship" from the little animals in the AI era, somewhere between virtuality and reality.
01
The Irresistible "Talking Fur Babies"
In the comment sections of AI pet videos, two types of comments frequently appear: one is "I finally understand why elders love watching AI kids", and the other teases "Is this AI or real?" The latter often gets responses from enthusiastic netizens saying, "It's real, not acted."
Before cats started talking, the blurring of reality and fiction was no joke. The earliest AI pet videos were mainly non-photorealistic, showing cats jumping out of planes or holding human babies in their arms. While these videos were simple and fun, they felt more like watching animations, lacking the warmth of real cats and dogs. By 2026, as domestic AI video tools have made significant progress in realism, creating photorealistic AI pet videos has become a new trend. People have started to experience AI cats as real "cloud-raised cats". A number of top accounts have rapidly gained followers through fixed personalities and serialized content, forming several mainstream categories, where pet lovers can find their perfect "fur baby".
One category is lifestyle-oriented and healing accounts, such as "Yun Mao" from @YunMao's Life Philosophy. On workdays, it takes the subway to work, attends meetings to make spreadsheets, buys a crispy grilled sausage at the night market after work, and visits a supermarket to pick up some snacks. Back home, it eats snacks while working on the computer. The kitten works and lives like a human, but without showing irritability or mental exhaustion. When facing decisions, it just "meows", providing spiritual healing for urban office workers.
The @HuangDan Recorder account gained high traffic after the kitten started doing food live streams, and later evolved into content where it takes a car back to its hometown, interacts and plays with friends, and goes rafting, accumulating nearly 8 million likes and 400,000 followers on Douyin alone. @XiaoJuGeng interacts with the audience by having the kitten speak to the camera and shoot its own vlogs, paired with cute dance moves in front of the camera, earning over 10 million likes and more than 700,000 followers on a single platform. The core competitiveness of these accounts lies in "using anthropomorphic cats to portray the daily lives of ordinary people", with every scene being familiar to the audience, creating full emotional resonance.
Another category often builds "strong storylines" in relatively short video content. For example, each video from @MaoZiQi has a clear theme, whether it's cooking, setting up a stall, or tie-dyeing, focusing on completing the story and creating dramatic moments. "At first, I just wanted an orange cat to cook, but then I realized that visuals alone without a storyline don't work, so I added a white cat," the content creator @MaoZiQi shared with Xumou. Through the interactions between the white cat and the orange cat, they established distinct "cat personalities": one hardworking and diligent, the other silly and mischievous. Each episode has a clear main task, gradually building up the storyline.
The early videos of @PiaoLili also featured two kittens interacting with humans, adding emotions like the kittens not wanting their owner to go to work during games like hide-and-seek. Later, clear storylines were gradually introduced. Taking the hit "Family Visit Special" as an example, the addition of the kitten Blue — from their first meeting to getting familiar, building affection, and the longing when they part — formed a 4-episode serialized series with a clear progression of emotional depth, cultivating a group of loyal followers. More importantly, the two cats in the videos are based on two kittens raised by the content creator, and Blue also has a real-life prototype. The "real cat" videos often appear as Easter eggs at the end of the videos, giving the audience's emotions a clear source.
There is also a category of AI pet accounts that do not follow the warm and touching path, but create micro-dramas based on distinct small animal personalities. For example, @LT Puppy Diary has created serialized micro-dramas such as "Reborn in the 80s: I'm the Favorite at the Supply and Marketing Cooperative" and "The Tyrant's Beloved Pet", with AI voiceovers explaining the plot. There are also many videos of talk show rants and AI costume transformations. Mini cute pet loop videos are the lowest cost and most efficient to produce, but they lack visual realism and emotional depth, with a relatively low traffic ceiling, making them more suitable for beginners in AI short videos.
No matter what type of account it is, there are opportunities to be found in the short video traffic pool. Content that would have long caused audience fatigue and crowded the track when performed by humans becomes fresh and attractive when acted out by kittens.
First, it assigns human behaviors to pets, such as working, attending meetings, visiting amusement parks, and cooking. Familiar scenes paired with unexpected roles naturally create dramatic conflicts and contrast. More importantly, it provides emotional value. In this era of pervasive involution and anxiety, cute pet content inherently has healing properties. Talking and empathetic virtual cats and dogs essentially reflect people's simple desire for companionship and warmth.
Whether you are a literary youth or a workplace elite, who wouldn't want to open their phone after a busy day and immerse themselves in watching a kitten's meowing, playful day? Even a line like "Mom, my paws don't smell bad" paired with a fur baby's chubby face and cute voice is enough to bring a little healing in just 10 seconds.
02
AI Creation Has Formulas, But Hits Don't Rely on Them
The AI pet track is getting increasingly crowded, and video production has long formed a standardized set of methods and processes. In @MaoZiQi's creative workflow, the hardest step is writing the script — "The content generated by AI is too formulaic." He tried using AI to write scripts, but in the end, he had to write the story outline himself.
The second step is to fix the character designs. His two cats already have reference images, so every time he generates a video, he just inputs the images and lets AI generate new clips based on these two cats, ensuring they look consistent across all videos. The third step is generation: using tools like Seedance 2.0 and Keling, he generates photorealistic visuals according to the script's storyboards. "But when writing prompts, avoid using adjectives and metaphors," @MaoZiQi explains. To make AI generate what you want, just explain it clearly in plain language. "Don't use metaphors, because AI sometimes struggles to understand them and will make a mess."
After generating the video, some post-editing work is done. After publishing, creators review user feedback to improve future content — this process sounds simple, but the real difficulty in creating a hit is never in technical operations, but in content design.
@MaoZiQi admits that making one video can take 1 to 2 days, and most of the time is spent brainstorming the script. "The story itself isn't hard. My videos show step-by-step processes, like making braised pork in brown sauce: you buy the meat first, then buy vegetables and cook. These steps are easy. But it's hard to weave in interesting jokes throughout the process, because you can't reuse the same joke over and over — you have to keep thinking of new ones."
Long-term account operation and updates require a large number of storylines and materials, but inspiration dries up and stories run out, which poses a more severe challenge for creators. This also becomes the dividing line between hit videos and the massive amount of unseen content: visuals are the shell, while plot and emotion are the core.
After @PiaoLili's "Family Visit Special" was released, netizens on Xiaohongshu often posted on their own to urge for updates. This is because the three kittens in the videos all have genuine emotions: Molly, being a stray kitten who has never met a "male cat", doesn't know how to please her "Uncle" Blue, so she offers her favorite "Tiandi No.1" drink to entertain him. Blue is moved and gives all his canned food to Molly. In these stories, there are pure emotions between cats, paired with their cute appearances and adorable words, making the content a hit.
In @MaoZiQi's account, the two kittens have completely different personalities, and their reactions to the same situation are different. The orange cat's mischief and carelessness, paired with the white cat's annoyance and fights back, bring the audience a steady stream of jokes, becoming a reason to keep watching. The kittens' personalities are consistent, building a long-lasting impression in the audience's minds.
On this point, AI can sometimes be very smart, understanding the creator's requirements for jokes and details, even predicting them in advance. @MaoZiQi shared a detail: in one episode, the original plan was just to have the white cat ride a bike carrying the orange cat on a bumpy road, but AI generated the orange cat bouncing up and down on the back seat. "I thought it was really cute, so I kept that scene." These "unplanned surprises" often become the moments in the video that best capture the audience's emotions.
"Most people watch AI pet videos for fun, because the cats are cute. But I'm still figuring out what makes the audience love them more," @MaoZiQi says. He tries his best to make the videos more interesting. "If I can't even make myself laugh while watching a finished video, it definitely won't get good traffic after posting."
He also wants to create something different. The name "MaoZiQi" comes from his personal interest in intangible cultural heritage. He made videos about handmade flower paper and tie-dyeing, but due to the limitations of AI's detail rendering and the high cost of generating long videos, he can only do preliminary attempts now. He plans to accumulate followers with funny content first, then move on to serialized content about intangible cultural heritage crafts. "Now there's too much common content about AI small animals. I need to create something different."
03
Are Virtual Pets More Profitable Than Real Creators?
Currently, the business models of top AI pet accounts are relatively clear, and there is plenty of room for them to make profits.
The first revenue stream is brand advertising. For example, the local Guangdong beverage brand "Tiandi No.1" appears everywhere in @PiaoLili's videos, naturally integrated into the kittens' daily lives and behaviors. This leads many out-of-town netizens to ask, "Is this drink a real brand?" while local netizens enthusiastically recommend it. The brand's official account even acknowledged the ad placement. Instead of ruining the viewing experience, the ads leverage the popularity of "Piaopiao" and "Molly" to drive purchases from non-local consumers.
Partnerships between brands and AI pet accounts cover not only traditional pet supplies, but also home goods, clothing, and youth-oriented daily products. In @MaoZiQi's videos, the kittens enjoy a certain brand of drink after cooking. According to the creator, the account's revenue mainly comes from platform earnings and brand collaborations. Although there aren't many ads right now, it can gradually maintain a stable income stream.
