AI bringt Abstraktion in historische Liebeserzählungen im Dramaformat. Die Zuschauer sind begeistert, aber wo ist das Geld?
If you've recently come across some strange short - form videos on short - video platforms, such as those featuring an evil dragon princess cooking antler soup, eating cute little goblins, and unleashing Labubu to deal with the male lead, don't be surprised. AI short dramas have truly gone beyond our wildest imaginations.
Currently, the AI short drama titled I'm Loved by a Nine - Tailed Fox Demon has been updated to episode 21. It has exceeded 120 million views on Douyin and has entered the top 20 of the weekly popularity list of short dramas on Douyin and Kuaishou.
The short drama I'm Loved by a Nine - Tailed Fox Demon (Source: Douyin @ Granny Dream)
In just one year, AI short dramas have undergone extremely rapid style evolutions. Last year, The Wonders of Mountains and Seas: Cutting Through Waves and Sanxingdui: Apocalypse of the Future, regarded as the starting points, had visuals that were far more intense than their narrative completeness, featuring a spectacular visual orientation with a touch of showmanship. This year, animal - anthropomorphic AI short dramas, represented by The Working Life of Kitten Xiaomiao, have gradually catered to the needs of short - video audiences, providing a relatively accessible emotional resonance and an outlet for emotional release. Now, "abstract and crazy dramas" like The Nine - Tailed Fox and The Tears of the Merman, which combine traditional ancient - style idol dramas with popular short - video memes, have emerged. AI short dramas are gradually shifting from showmanship to cross - media content collages, and from demonstrating capabilities to emotional expression and genre - based development, moving closer to the traditional film and television industry.
However, there is still a clear gap between content and the industry. Although AI short dramas are becoming more and more visible in the short - video content ecosystem, they still have a long way to go before achieving monetization. The reasons behind this are not only the difficulty of advertising implantation in AI - generated videos but also the psychological gap between the industry's expectations for AI short dramas and the actual production costs.
AI short dramas are maturing rapidly, but their content imagination has clearly outpaced their commercialization path.
AI Short Dramas: From Spectacle to Abstraction
Over the past year, with the technological upgrade of AIGC tools, the themes and genres of AI short dramas have undergone rapid iterations, almost going through an evolutionary path that took movies decades and TV series over a decade.
Two "benchmark works" of AI short dramas launched last year, Sanxingdui: Apocalypse of the Future and The Wonders of Mountains and Seas: Cutting Through Waves, both chose grand themes. The former presented an imaginative picture of the future world, including cosmic wars, alien colonization, and archaeological science fiction. The latter visualized in batches the mythical beasts, strange creatures, and divine beasts from ancient legends in Shan Hai Jing, such as the nine - headed monster Jiuying, the strange fish Yingyu, and the divine roc Kunpeng.
The short drama Sanxingdui: Apocalypse of the Future (Source: Douyin)
At the peak of the technological explosion, most AI short dramas pursued visual spectacles and had an element of "showing off". Their narrative was weak, and the main purpose was to demonstrate to the industry the imaginative space of AI film and television creation in terms of themes and visuals. Compared with short dramas themselves, they were closer to "technology + content" brand - display projects.
After the concept and creation of AI short dramas became more popular, the participation of ordinary creators inevitably led the content to become simpler and more focused on meeting the basic emotional needs of the audience. As a result, the most popular content became animal - anthropomorphic AI short dramas.
Animal - anthropomorphic AI short dramas originated from the imitation of popular foreign video - platform content and quickly became a content trend on Douyin and Kuaishou. The most representative one is the The Working Life of Kitten Xiaomiao series, which has exceeded 140 million views. The kittens and puppies in the drama can not only express emotions but also are given personas such as "scheming female lead" and "office worker", which triggers the audience's empathy and achieves a similar stress - relieving effect as watching short videos and short dramas.
By this stage, AI short dramas were still creating themes that traditional film and television works could not achieve with human resources. Although the spectacular attributes generated by AI still existed, they had been greatly weakened. In terms of themes and content, in addition to grand narratives, more daily - life - oriented content that caters to the preferences of short - video audiences emerged, showing a stronger adaptability to the audience and a sense of traffic awareness.
Kittens and puppies become office workers (Source: Douyin @ Kitten Xiaomiao's Street - Vending Life, @ Biji Xiong)
On the other hand, using animals as the main characters avoids the common defects of AI tools in generating human expressions and movements, which can be regarded as making the best use of the advantages and avoiding the disadvantages.
However, "presenting humans more realistically" must be the technological breakthrough direction of AI tools. Therefore, with the further improvement of technological capabilities, AI short dramas represented by The Nine - Tailed Fox and The Tears of the Merman, which combine with the grammar of traditional ancient - style idol dramas, have become the latest trend. These works basically adopt the settings of female - oriented Xianxia and fantasy dramas, following the template of the strong - female - lead persona and typical plots. However, in the specific presentation, they are closer to the abstract culture of short videos. The combination of the two presents a chaotic "crazy feeling".
Taking The Nine - Tailed Fox as an example, the generated text clearly incorporates hot memes from bloggers such as "Fujian Amiao". The female lead refers to men as "gentlemen" and "handsome guys". When she sees the male lead kneeling to greet her, her first words are: "Where's your Adam's apple cover?" The whole drama is full of absurd plots, aiming to surprise the audience. In the smooth rhythm, the female lead casually performs a series of absurd actions, such as cooking a pot of stewed deer demon to nourish her body, buying little goblins as snacks in a "goblin breeding farm", and using an excavator to destroy the male lead's lair.
The "abstract perception" presented by AI short dramas is not an isolated aesthetic feature. In an article published by DomoreDumou some time ago, it was also analyzed that the "Internet - sense" is making a comeback in long - form dramas such as Eternal Night Galaxy and A Dream in the Scroll in the past two years. This type of AI short dramas forms a certain echo in the expression logic. "Going crazy" is equivalent to the female lead's random "blind - box" - style actions. They will make unreasonable but highly contrasting new choices in urgent situations, bringing a little freshness and contrast to the genre - based narrative.
I'm Loved by a Nine - Tailed Fox Demon (Source: Douyin @ Granny Dream)
The difference is that in AI short dramas, the expression of "deconstructive craziness" tends to be more extreme. Whether it is the language style, plot logic, or character behavior, they all tend to be chaotic and collaged. However, precisely because of this, they have gained strong recognition and high discussion.
The Lightest - Weight Content Testing Ground
The combination of AI short dramas with traditional genres such as ancient - style idol dramas and Xianxia dramas is not only the result of style evolution but also marks that they are approaching a more mature film and television industry path. One obvious trend is the move towards IP - based development.
In the view of professional content teams, IP - based development is often a prerequisite for the commercialization path. Wendy, a senior industry insider with more than a decade of experience in screenwriting for online movies and long - form dramas and has completed the shooting of multiple AI short films and short dramas, told DomoreDumou: In any project involving investment, when the creative team has a "tea - talk" with the investors, they will be asked, "Why do you think this project can make money?" Whether the investment amount is as low as 100,000 or as high as tens of millions, the logic of capital return must be clearly explained to the investors. In this context, "big IPs" have become the most straightforward way to persuade investors because they mean an existing audience base and predictable attention.
Currently, some platforms and teams in the industry have begun to try to combine IPs with AI short dramas. For example, Covering the Sky recently launched by Zhangyue is regarded as the first representative case of adapting a big IP into a micro - short drama by combining AI technology with live - action shooting. The AI short drama Mysteries of the Wild, adapted from the original work by Tianxia Bachang, is also about to be launched. These projects are verifying that AI short dramas are trying to enter a larger industrial chain by leveraging familiar IP frameworks.
The all - AI short drama Mysteries of the Wild (Source: Weibo @ Tianzhi Jiaozi11)
For most teams or individual creators who cannot afford to buy IPs, another way is to achieve "pseudo - IPization" - rewriting well - known classics. DomoreDumou noticed that in the content of Douyin's AI short dramas, many works select characters from Journey to the West, The Investiture of the Gods, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Tang and Song poems, or historical allusions. These characters come with a natural story structure and a basic understanding of the characters, and also have a certain space for reinterpretation, which is in line with the creation scale and space of AI short dramas.
Wendy rewrote a well - known story into a female - oriented AI short drama, and her work has achieved 14 million views. "I selected a theme that is well - known to the audience and can address the current female dilemmas from IPs that do not require copyright, and thus gained a first - mover advantage," she summarized.
The convergence of genres and the maturity of narrative formats have enabled AI short dramas to serve as a testing ground for short and long - form dramas.
In Wendy's view, in the next stage, AI short dramas need to find a different positioning from live - action short dramas, long - form dramas, and movies. Their ecological position may be to conduct lighter - weight content testing for short and long - form dramas.
AI short dramas with built - in backgrounds (Source: Douyin)
Based on her own experience, she refined an operational path: Creators can find an emotional logic that seems fragmented but actually has commonalities from the massive content of short - form videos, extract a narrative template from it, and then use the efficiency of AI to quickly transform it into short films or short dramas. They can then collect feedback from the audience and use it as a reference for the creation of formal short or long - form dramas.
Wendy suggested adopting a wide - net strategy. "First, find 10 topics and create a demo for each. The demo includes the story setting and character types, with a duration of about two to three minutes. Then post all of them online and check the audience's comments. Screen them layer by layer and create the first episode based on the final selected version."
Wendy believes that the creation and consumption context of TV series and movies has changed significantly compared to a decade ago. Currently, there seems to be a "disconnect" between the audience and the creation. The short - video genres are very diverse, and ordinary people can find nodes to establish emotional connections with others. The combination of AI short dramas may provide more opportunities for TV series and movies to be more genre - based and resonate with the audience emotionally.
The first - episode AI short dramas of AIGC creators on Douyin (Source: Douyin)
Currently, as a light - weight content testing ground, AI short dramas provide the possibility of low - cost trial - and - error and rapid verification for some creators, which is a direction worth trying. Compared with the long development process of traditional TV series and movies, this testing mechanism may bring a more flexible way to start projects and provide another idea for future TV series development.
Monetization? Still a Labor of Love
Although the threshold for generating and creating AI short dramas continues to decrease, it does not mean that it has become a mature and profitable business. On the contrary, at present, with a large number of content creators entering the market while the commercial path is still unclear, AI short dramas are more like an experimental trend of "working out of love".
"I haven't heard of anyone really making a fortune from this," Wendy said bluntly. In her view, although some AI short dramas have achieved high views or advertising implantation, most content creators are still in the trial - or even subsidy - stage. The AI short drama with 14 million views only brought her the psychological comfort of audience recognition, and the actual monetary reward was basically zero.
The reason, according to Wendy, is the misalignment between customer perception and the price system. Many demanders still regard AI short dramas as "cheap video services" with low or even zero cost, low thresholds, and the ability to be quickly iterated. They ignore the labor cost and hidden creation risks and are difficult to accept quotes that match the creation of film and television content.
Currently, AI short dramas in the industry mainly follow the process of text - to - image and image - to - video. For the former, Midjourney has relatively stable results, and for the latter, there are options such as Keling, Jimeng, and Pixverse. Although videos can be generated by large models, it does not mean "fully automatic