Grassroots actors, the first victims under the knife of AI
October 23, 2026, is destined to be a memorable milestone for China's film and television industry.
On this day, *Sanxingdui: Past and Future*, the first domestic full-process AI-produced theatrical feature film that obtained the public screening license from the National Film Administration, officially landed in cinemas across the country. In its 100-minute ultra-realistic footage, all characters are original digital images, with no real-life actors appearing on screen.
Also on the same day, the *Opinions on Adapting to the Development of Artificial Intelligence Technology to Help Build an Employment-Friendly Development Mode* issued by the General Office of the State Council was released, which clearly put forward the requirement to "effectively mitigate the employment substitution impact of artificial intelligence applications", and "prudently control the scope, intensity and rhythm of AI application in labor-intensive industries to minimize the impact on practitioners as much as possible".
On one hand, AI has officially obtained the "identity card" to enter the theater market, and virtual characters created by generative AI have rushed from the small screens of short videos and micro dramas all the way to the core position of traditional film and television; on the other hand, top-level policy design has begun to sound the alarm for AI replacing human jobs.
Caught between the two, the acting industry with millions of practitioners is undergoing a brutal reshuffle, and AI has drawn a clear kill line for this industry.
Above this line is the complex performing art that relies on life experience, emotional depth and impromptu expression; below this line is the standardized performing labor that can be disassembled, described and repeated.
The vast majority of grassroots performing practitioners stand below this line, bearing the most direct impact of the technological wave.
The Chill
Even the A-list stars at the top of the pyramid can feel the chill sweeping through the film and television industry.
In July 2026, Mark Chao, Golden Bell Award for Best Actor winner, confessed in an interview with *People* magazine that he only received 10 script invitations in the first half of the year, while in the heyday of his career, he received far more scripts in a single month.
The same anxiety also plagues Jia Nailiang. In June 2026, he directly responded to netizens' question of "why you keep doing livestream sales instead of acting" in his live stream, and plainly said the four words "no dramas to act in". This professionally trained actor who once won the Huading Award described his awkward situation: "I am not qualified enough to play the elder role, and I am not suitable for the idol role", and fewer and fewer directors come to him for cooperation.
There was even a famous scene where a group of stars "applied for jobs" at the 2026 Weibo Movie Night in June. Stars including Dong Zijian, Liu Haoran and Cheng Xiao cared less about winning awards or walking the red carpet, but frequently showed their friendliness to the directors and producers on site, saying that "they look forward to getting more work opportunities".
If top actors still have the exposure right under the spotlight to fight for opportunities for themselves, the extras at the middle and lower levels of the industry don't even have a chance to speak up.
The most brutal change has taken place in Hengdian. In the first quarter of this year, the number of micro drama startups in Hengdian plummeted by three quarters year on year, and the vacancy rate of film studios, which were once extremely hard to book, is close to 80%.
At the peak of 2025, extras would queue up at the gate of the Actors Guild before dawn, and there were too many job notices to take all; in 2026, the gate of the Guild is often empty. Official data shows that the total number of registered "Hengpiao" (drifters working as extras in Hengdian) has exceeded 150,000, but only 700 to 800 valid job notices for ordinary extras are released every day.
According to a report by *China Newsweek* in August, more than 60% of grassroots actors are almost in a zero-income state after the Spring Festival. Some switched to delivering food, some returned to their hometowns, and some set up stalls on the streets of Hengdian to sell snacks.
What is more noteworthy is that the situation of the micro drama industry, which was still a booming track two years ago, has taken a sharp turn for the worse.
Previously, top micro drama actors could get a daily salary of 50,000 to 100,000 yuan, and mid-tier actors could also stably get 1,500 to 2,000 yuan per day. But in 2026, the daily salary of top actors has directly dropped to around 10,000 yuan; the daily salary of mid-tier actors has been cut to 500 to 800 yuan. The industry is shrinking far faster than expected. A leading micro drama company signed more than 200 actors in 2025, and has terminated contracts with more than 100 of them by 2026, and most of the remaining actors are in a semi-unemployed state.
While real actors are constantly exiting the stage, AI actors are striding to the center of the stage.
In March 2026, Youhug Media, which has produced hit real-life dramas such as *I Will Find You a Better Home* and *The Story of Xijiang*, suddenly officially announced that it has signed two AI digital artists Qin Lingyue and Lin Xiyan, and simultaneously launched the AI drama *Strange Tales of Bronze in Qinling Mountains*. These two digital artists not only have their own film and television works, but also have opened social accounts on Douyin, Xiaohongshu and other platforms, updating their daily lives and taking commercial cooperation just like real artists.
Subsequently, many companies including Yuxiao Media followed up to sign AI actors, digital artists began to enter the film and television production system in batches.
The number of AI micro dramas in China has shown explosive growth. Data released by the China Netcasting Services Association shows that in the first quarter of 2026, about 128,000 micro dramas were launched across the industry, of which 122,000 were AI micro dramas, accounting for more than 95%.
Overwhelming Dominance
The biggest factor that AI can almost take over the micro drama industry in just one year is undoubtedly the cost.
Previously, the production mode of traditional real-life micro dramas has long been mature: the cost of a single work is generally 500,000 to 1 million yuan, the regular crew has 40 to 50 people, and the whole cycle from casting, set building, shooting to post-production is about 2 to 3 months.
The maturity of technology has directly broken the cost threshold of micro dramas. The lowest-end assembly-line AI micro dramas in the industry can produce 80 episodes with a cost of 3,000 to 5,000 yuan, a team of 3 people, and 5 days; for high-quality AI micro dramas, the cost is mostly between 100,000 and 200,000 yuan, the production cycle is 7 to 14 days, and the team only needs 3 to 8 people.
For the hit *Immortal Slaughter Platform Real-life AI Version* that became popular earlier this year, Xiong Binghui, CEO of the producer Dream Smart, gave clear figures: a 12-person team, a 30-day production cycle, a 100,000-yuan computing power cost, and the overall production cost is only a quarter of that of a real-life micro drama of the same scale. If we take into account the hidden costs such as actor schedule coordination, venue rental, reshooting and supplementary shooting, AI's cost advantage will be even greater.
Behind the plummeting cost, the technology side has crossed a key usability threshold.
From the end of 2025 to the beginning of 2026, mainstream video generation models have made collective breakthroughs in character consistency, lip sync and shot scheduling. Especially in strongly fictional themes such as fantasy, post-apocalypse and period dramas, they can output stably, and the picture quality has reached the level of "usable for micro dramas".
When technology is no longer an obstacle, capital and platforms will naturally vote with their feet and turn to a more efficient and lower-cost production method.
Behind the fact that real-life micro dramas can be easily overwhelmed by AI, there is an existing "fragile background" of the real-life micro drama industry itself. Since the rise of micro dramas, they have been accompanied by criticism of stereotyped plots, formulaic performances and functionalized characters.
It can even be said that the role function of characters in the vast majority of micro dramas is almost fixed: the villain is responsible for being arrogant and slapping others in the face, the subordinate is responsible for nodding and agreeing, the elder is responsible for pressuring the younger generation to get married, and the passer-by is responsible for exclaiming and cheering. They do not need complex inner scenes, nor rich layered emotions, they only need to stand at the designated position, say the designated lines, and complete a reversal or a punchline.
What these micro dramas output actually alienates performance into a kind of mechanical and repetitive performing labor. In the logic of AI, such labor can be clearly disassembled into three modules: action, expression and lines, which can be described in a standardized way and repeated infinitely. "Being able to be described in a standardized way" is exactly what generative AI is best at.
When the full value of a character is to say three lines and make an angry expression, there is almost no difference for the audience between AI generation and real actor performance, but for the producer, it can save more than 90% of the cost.
In this case, being replaced is almost inevitable.
Remaining Space
Therefore, to resist the invasion of AI, practitioners still need to start from the self-cultivation of actors. Complex performances above the kill line are still the exclusive domain of human beings.
Current AI can already accurately complete basic emotions such as frowning, shedding tears, laughing and getting angry, and perform standard actions such as walking, turning around and fighting according to instructions.
But it is difficult for AI to reproduce the layers of complex emotions, let alone capture all kinds of subtle manifestations in impromptu reactions. Just like it cannot accurately perceive the inner waves under the calm expression of Shurou when she learns that her husband has remarried, nor can it reproduce the emotional outburst of Xu Fu after witnessing the death of his friend. These are the real barriers of acting as a profession.
This logic applies to any industry. The kill line drawn by AI always targets standardized and repetitive labor, not the profession itself.
Take the translation industry as an example. Before the popularization of generative AI, text translation of ordinary business letters, product manuals and daily information was the main source of income for a large number of junior translators. Now, the translation accuracy of AI for standardized texts has exceeded 95%, the cost per thousand characters is less than one-tenth of that of human translation, and the delivery efficiency is dozens of times higher.
The *2026 China Translation Industry Development Report* released by the Translators Association of China shows that the substitution effect of AI on junior translators is obvious. But at the same time, the report also points out that more than 40% of enterprises still need translators with intermediate and advanced levels, "senior talents are even scarcer because of their irreplaceability."
Take the customer service industry as another example. According to Gartner's research data, by 2026, conversational AI has helped call centers reduce labor costs by about 80 billion US dollars. The substitution rate of primary customer service positions such as standardized order inquiry, password reset and business consultation has reached 85% to 90%.
But at the same time, human customer service who handles high-level complaints, complex disputes and customized needs has not decreased, but has become more important - they need to solve problems that AI cannot solve, and take on more complex user emotions.
While technology is eliminating low-end labor, it is also raising the threshold for higher-end professions. In a sense, while AI is taking away jobs, it is more of a talent filter.
For actors and other industry practitioners who are really threatened by AI, this may be the worst era, but above the kill line, there will always be things that cannot be taken away by technology.
This article is from the WeChat official account "Giant Tide WAVE", Author: Lao Yuer, Editor: Yang Xuran, published with authorization from 36Kr.