Single-handedly creating viral blockbusters and cultivating A-list artists: The "Super Evolution" of AI comic dramas in the summer content slot.
The entire summer short drama season is almost equivalent to the summer of AI man dramas.
Live-action short dramas have not produced a phenomenal hit for a long time. Open the overall ranking of Hongguo, the proportion of AI short dramas in the TOP100 list has risen from about 50% in May to 70%-80% in August. Accordingly, the market share of live-action short dramas continues to shrink. Last year, there were still multiple live-action short drama hits with 3 billion views, but this year the "3 billion view" mark has disappeared. Even with top stars like Zhang Chi and Guo Yuxin in the cast, the speed of breaking 1 billion views is slower than in the past.
The wave of AI is coming, but not everyone can ride it to success. According to DataEye's *2026 H1 AI Drama and Man Drama Data Report*, in the first half of this year, more than 221,900 new native AI short dramas were launched on Douyin alone, with one new AI short drama going online every dozens of seconds. There are 1055 AI short dramas with over 100 million native views on Douyin, the 100-million-view hit rate is only 0.47%, 12,000 AI short dramas have over 10 million views, with a 10-million-view rate of 5.8%. Behind the explosive production capacity, over 90% of AI short dramas fail to stand out from the crowd and cannot generate profits.
From the first half of the year to the summer season, from Seedance 2.0 to Seedance 2.5, AI man dramas are iterating versions every month, and new trends are emerging: grassroots teams with limited resources create viral hits, content IPs are richer and evolving towards high-quality works, AI virtual artists are becoming star-level, and commercial monetization paths are diversified.
Single-person creation of viral hits,
Genre breakthrough and serialized development
From "being too embarrassed to admit you watch short dramas" to "even Jia Zhangke is watching short dramas", and then to "people of all ages and genders are watching AI man dramas", these stages respectively mark several different phases of the industry's development.
It took several years for live-action short dramas to gradually move towards high-quality production. AI man dramas have gone through the same "self-evolution path" in almost half a year, which is also accompanied by a sharp drop in entry barriers and a sharp surge in output. In general, the hit rate of hyper-realistic human-like dramas and 3D man dramas still leads that of 2D man dramas, as the former two naturally have a closer psychological distance to the audience.
We previously reviewed a batch of AI man dramas during the Spring Festival season. Half a year later, with model iteration and picture quality upgrading, creative limitations are constantly broken, creative expression is more free, a large number of cross-field creators pour in, and many trends at that time have changed.
The previous situation where "Journey to the West IPs took up half the market" and "Xianxia, sci-fi, fantasy and apocalyptic themes dominated" has been improved. Large-scale special effects scenes are no longer the only magic weapon for AI man dramas, multiple genres such as cute kid stories and urban romance have achieved breakthroughs; the AI man drama market that used to be "male-dominated" has also produced more female-oriented hits, including *After Divorce I Thrive All the Way*, *Love Under the Eaves*, *Deep Love Invades the Rest of My Life* and so on.
The proven hit formulas that worked for live-action short dramas still work when applied to AI man dramas. The refreshing pleasure of counterattack in male-oriented genres still never fails to attract audiences. For example, the AI hyper-realistic drama *Everyone Has Reborn, Who Still Pretends to Be a Rich Second Generation* belongs to the "Dihua-style" narrative that plays on the trope of characters unconsciously overestimating others' abilities.
The highly competitive Xianxia cultivation genre needs to create more innovations. After hits such as *The Magic Basin of All Treasures: The Mixed Spiritual Root Is the Real Boss* and *The Book of Mortals' Hundred Lifetimes*, *Who Let This Illiterate Cultivate Immortality* creates a large number of funny plots around the "illiterate" setting.
As a sign of high-quality development, AI man drama creators have begun to consciously add more humanistic care to their works. For example, *Green Plum by the Inkstone* inspired by *The Draft for Nephew's Funeral Oration*, the second most famous running script work of Yan Zhenqing, focuses on classical Chinese style and attracts linkage with local cultural tourism institutions;
Or connect with realistic themes to resonate with the vast number of office workers, such as *The Laid-off Girl*; or take advantage of the efficient and fast AI content production feature to hit hot social topics and increase topic exposure. For example, when the topic of "sassy social girl teases old man" became viral across the whole network, multiple AI man dramas of the "sassy social girl" theme emerged, such as *Does the Sassy Social Girl Also Need to Repair Mecha?*.
Just like the top IPs of live-action short dramas, popular IPs have quickly embarked on the path of serialized development, most of which become hits as soon as they are launched, and the sequel development efficiency is significantly higher than that of live-action short dramas. For example, *The Legend of Ten Thousand Demons* has seen over 100 million views for all its seasons, with total views exceeding 6 billion, and it dominates the top ranking by a large margin. Its first season was launched in March, and 11 seasons have been updated so far.
*Everyone Has Reborn, Who Still Pretends to Be a Rich Second Generation* launched its first season in June, and has updated 10 seasons so far. The producer mentioned in an interview that it only takes three days to produce a new season. Extending the number of episodes and adding more content to maintain popularity has also become a common strategy. For example, the second season of *The Junior Sister Who Is the Favorite of the Sword Sect* has as many as 666 episodes, and the 11th and 12th seasons of *The Mortal's Immortal Gourd* have as many as 1000 episodes.
The meaning of "technological equalization of rights" has been truly interpreted. AI helps with everything from script creation to storyboarding, the trial and error cost is low enough, and the works that finally stand out are usually those with better content quality. Content and creators become the most core part. While the stable quality control of large companies can guarantee the average level, most of the hits are produced by little-known small companies, two-person micro teams with non-professional backgrounds, or even OPC (one-person companies).
The creator of *The Legend of Ten Thousand Demons*, Guangyu Production, was registered and established on March 11 this year, with a registered capital of only 100,000 yuan and a staff size of 0-20 people, which is a standard small team. *Guixu* is created entirely by one person named "Xuanjiu", a post-90s dad and art graduate. The series *Exiled to the Border, The Criminal Wife Develops Wasteland and Raises a War God* has accumulated over 6 billion views, and its creator "Duodu Animation" is a husband-and-wife studio run by a pair of post-95s couple. *The Junior Sister Who Is the Favorite of the Sword Sect* is produced by Liuyue Studio, with all works independently made by one creator. The creator of *Love Under the Eaves* used to be a semiconductor engineer. *Green Plum by the Inkstone* is made by a media professional who learned related skills on his own.
Compared with top production studios, these grassroots creators with no capital, no background and no relevant experience may get rid of many restrictions. Some win with their art skills and control over picture rhythm, while others win with original inspiration and meticulous polishing.
Under the background that "an ordinary drama takes 3 days to produce, a high-quality drama costs 100,000 yuan with a 15-day production cycle", driven by the determination to make their debut works a hit, they often put in far more effort than the industry average. The 11 episodes of *The Laid-off Girl* took about 30 days to produce, with a single episode production cost exceeding 10,000 yuan. The single episode production cost of *Guixu* exceeds 15,000 yuan, with a total investment of nearly 200,000 yuan. The creator spent three to four days polishing for just 1 minute of video, and kept working on the whole work for five months.
AI artists becoming star-level, merchandise sales and C-end payment
The infinite expansion of production capacity in turn dilutes the hit rate, and also increases public doubts about the future development direction of AI man dramas. All problems related to AI man dramas ultimately boil down to two words: monetization.
If AI man dramas as a new species at the beginning of the year could hardly be imagined to have such promising commercial prospects, after half a year of rapid development, current AI man dramas have entered a new stage of commercial monetization. As a type of content product, this means they gradually have the same long life cycle and more three-dimensional and multi-dimensional value as live-action short dramas.
As a fragmented entertainment product to kill time, AI man dramas mostly show functions of mental relaxation and emotional companionship. Female-oriented sweet romance themes have features such as high emotional stickiness and high willingness to pay, which is proven by the fact that *Love and Deep Space*, the top otome game that has been involved in recent controversies, has earned 1.1 billion US dollars globally.
At present, the AI man dramas with clearer commercial monetization paths are also mainly female-oriented.
The ability to create stars is the key proof of IP value. Recently, AI man dramas have welcomed several "top virtual artists". They never have public scandals, never break up the CP pairs set in the works, and never get tired of working.
Recently, Hongguo announced that a number of virtual actors settled on its platform. Jiang Yuechu, the leading actress of the top hit *The Legend of Ten Thousand Demons*, is the first virtual actor officially announced to settle in Hongguo, with more than 120,000 fans on Hongguo and more than 220,000 fans on Douyin.
In *Deep Love Invades the Rest of My Life* with 5 billion views across the network, the leading man Duan Yan is regarded as the "No.1 AI boyfriend". Just like all real celebrity couples, he actively does CP joint activities to create sweet content. On Douyin, the content related to the topic #DuanYan has been viewed more than 1.4 billion times. The fan account of "Duan Yan and Rong Jiqiao" has more than 550,000 fans. They share selfies, show their sweet daily life, announce the news of co-starring in new works for the second and third time, announce the start of filming, and release behind-the-scenes previews. They have become a powerful official promotion account of the company, and have also attracted advertising investment, with Duan Yan appearing as the "Ideal AI Companion for Tmall Qixi Festival".
Fang Taozi, the protagonist of the viral hit *The Laid-off Girl*, is obviously designed to be operated as a long-term virtual character IP from the very beginning of development. The first episode was launched on June 12, and the creator opened the personal account @Fang Taozi for the leading actress on June 14. Her facial features, makeup, outfits, MBTI type and home decoration are all carefully designed to ensure sufficient recognizability and resonate with urban fashion girls. She soon received a high-paid commercial endorsement for contact lens sales, though the endorsement ended up in failure quickly, it still brings a lot of inspiration to the commercialization of AI artists.
Another monetization path explored by AI man dramas is selling same-style peripheral merchandise. In the official flagship store of Barbie accessories, the pink four-leaf clover bracelet "same style as Duan Yan" has sold more than 10,000 units on Douyin alone. Roughly calculated, the sales revenue of this single bracelet on this platform has exceeded 1 million yuan.
Another monetization method is C-end payment, which means attracting users to pay for the content. This is counterintuitive at the moment when free short dramas are dominant. The female-oriented AI man drama *Forbidden Zone of Heart* was first launched for free on Hongguo in its first season to accumulate popularity, then moved to Bilibili. Only one week after the launch of its second season, it adopted a payment mode to unlock the full episodes of the second season, the full episodes of the first season and the extra stories. Under the high-level charging unlocking mode of Bilibili, it received more than 5400 paid supports, and the revenue on this single platform alone has reached more than 160,000 yuan.
It can be said that all the monetization methods that otome games have tried can be applied to female-oriented AI man dramas.
However, like all new things growing in an unregulated environment, infringement is a problem that must be solved in the commercial development of AI drama IPs. It is obvious that the "Duan Yan same-style bracelet" is highly similar to a product of an international luxury brand, and many AI man dramas have also been questioned for having voices that sound exactly like famous voice actors such as Wu Lei, and faces that are identical to the leading men in otome games.
The industry has received signals of stricter supervision. Earlier, the Hongguo platform has taken down a number of non-compliant AI dramas, Douyin has tightened its revenue sharing coefficient, and the National Radio and Television Administration has implemented the policy of filing dramas before they go online. Starting from today, Hongguo has significantly lowered the minimum guaranteed payment for AI drama scripts, which has discouraged a number of low-quality drama productions. The *Administrative Measures for the Development of Micro Short Dramas* issued by relevant national departments will come into effect on September 1, 2026, which clearly requires that micro short dramas generated and produced by AI must add prompt marks in obvious positions of each episode.
After the industry reshuffle, a number of AI man drama hits and their follow-up development have begun to take shape. A number of companies including Tinghuadao have chosen to go global to explore the more blue-oversaeas market. Everything is developing at a lightning speed: by the end of this year or the next Spring Festival season, AI man dramas will have evolved into a new form again.