AI dramas are far better than expected and have become an absolute smash hit that wins over audiences widely.
Internet operator Oule recently told me that she has started watching AI-generated dramas, and has already binged two seasons of *The Laid-off Girl*. The sophisticated modeling effect has completely eliminated the "Uncanny Valley" effect brought by AI, making the viewing experience almost no different from that of regular short dramas. "What's more, the male lead in the AI-modeled drama is more handsome than real human actors," she said.
Oule also watched the AI drama *Daylight and Eggplant*, a story about a girl who travels into a book with her best friend, disguises herself as a man and enters an all-boys school, which has received over 1 million likes on almost every episode. In AI dramas, the appearance of the male lead will not be criticized, and the modeling of the female lead disguised as a man is also more convincing than that in real-life dramas.
My elite cousin who lives far away also shared the news that she is indulging in AI-generated Korean dramas. A domestic AI Korean drama *Pretty Malice* that lasts less than 7 minutes completely won her heart: "I, who never watch Korean dramas, even finished the whole episode." You may not be able to imagine how Sichuan-Chongqing dialect, Korean, Korean OST and Chinese OST are integrated together, but in the era of the explosive growth of AI dramas, this has indeed happened, and the work has received 4.2 million likes.
The evolution of AI dramas is still accelerating. For example, the costume drama track has ushered in a new aesthetic style, and *Not a Demon* has set off a "Strange Stories from a Chinese Studio" trend. After the creator who never eats pickled mustard greens polished the first episode, it received millions of likes. In the bullet comments, the audience not only discussed the exquisite production, but also focused on the plot discussion: evaluations such as "human nature", "spreading rumors" and "public clamor can blur right and wrong" appeared frequently. Some netizens wrote: This is exactly the meaning of AI dramas. As a new creator in the AI track, the creator "Never Eats Pickled Mustard Greens" has accumulated more than 600,000 fans with only two episodes of *Not a Demon*, far exceeding his own goal.
Half a year ago, most people still held a mentality of rejecting the "Uncanny Valley" effect when facing AI actors and AI dramas. Half a year later, people have easily got over this effect and shown a trend of loving them unexpectedly.
This is also reflected in the data side. According to *DataEye 2026 H1 AI Drama and Comic Drama Data Report*, the user scale of AI dramas and comic dramas has grown from 120 million in 2025 to more than 600 million in the first half of 2026. DataEye Research Institute estimates that this figure is expected to reach the 700 million level in 2027.
The reason why AI dramas are becoming more and more popular is that they fill the gaps in many content types. In this track, you can not only see parts that domestic dramas cannot shoot, but also see domestic Korean dramas, domestic American dramas, and even cross-cultural integrated types. Netizens are addicted to AI dramas, because of the sense of freshness and scarcity that neither long dramas nor short dramas can provide.
The first category is historical time travel stories that real-life dramas cannot shoot.
*Green Plum by the Inkstone*, which has aired two seasons, is a signal. The female lead Li Youwei is a time traveler, and the male lead Yan Jiming is a character that actually existed in history: a young hero who died for his country in Yan Zhenqing's *Eulogy to My Nephew*. The main creative team of this drama is the creator team of LibTV. The person in charge once said in an interview: "The team hopes to use AI to try to be a 'supplementary writer of history'"; in *The Extraordinary Life of Li Jinglong in Ming Dynasty*, the male lead travels to Li Jinglong's body and uses modern people's way of life to change Li Jinglong's fate.
In addition, there are time-travel dramas such as *Travel to Zhu Youjian, I Extend the Ming Dynasty for 300 Years*, *Adviser in Cao Cao's Camp*, *Soul Travel to Emperor Qinzong of Song*, and *Commander-in-Chief of Tang Dynasty*. The creators give the protagonists omniscient perspectives, allowing them to plan strategies and stir up the political situation in historical plots and characters familiar to the audience, and subtly input their own understanding of historical characters, as if people went back to the era of chasing *A Step into the Past*. This kind of plot can no longer appear in traditional long dramas.
The second category is to re-open classic IPs with AI.
When classic old dramas such as *The Story of Ming Lan*, *Empresses in the Palace* and *My Fair Princess* are repeatedly rewatched, AI dramas open up new perspectives of fan fiction on the basis of the original plots. *The Sheng Family Are All Martial Artists* is based on the original character setting of *The Story of Ming Lan*, directly allowing the villain Zhu Manniang to travel to Wei Xiaoniang's body, join hands with little Ming Lan to fight Lin Qinshuang, and stage a wonderful plot of villains fighting against villains. When the audience watches *Empresses in the Palace*, they always say that every character in this drama can be written into a separate book. This wish has been realized in AI dramas, and prequels such as *The Prequel of Yixiu*, *An Lingrong Reborn and Breaks Through the Ruyi's Royal Love in the Palace* and *The Rebirth of Consort Hua* have come one after another. All the content that the audience wants to see but that traditional film and television dramas cannot shoot, AI dramas have made them all for everyone at once.
The third category is a brand new track that real-life dramas have never dared to think about.
Instead of focusing on the fast-paced "cool point" that many creators are competing for, creators have developed new tracks such as domestic Korean dramas, American dramas and Japanese dramas. Chinese people "shoot" foreign dramas with the support of AI, so they don't have to worry about the actors' oral pronunciation, nor do they have to worry about the plot being unacceptable to the audience. These domestic foreign dramas may not be sought after overseas, but they are definitely popular in China.
The 5-episode domestic American high school drama *The Accident* has exceeded 76 million views on Douyin; AI creator Spongecake has successively created two domestic American dramas *Truth or Dare* and *The Other Self* since March this year, and the third e-sports-themed work *Fairy and Loser* is about to be broadcast; in addition to the domestic Korean drama *Pretty Malice*, there are also works such as *Chinese Transfer Student* and *The Neighbor Opposite is My Enemy*, where overseas students from Chaoshan, Henan and Northeast China all show up. Some people tell stories around Korean nobles, and some create Mary Sue plots around Korean entertainment, which is a brand-new experience that has never been tasted in the field of traditional long dramas.
The outbreak of AI dramas hides the real content aesthetics of the audience. According to the statistics of *DataEye 2026 H1 AI Drama and Comic Drama Data Report*, in the word frequency distribution of native dramas on Douyin, AI dramas and comic dramas of types such as rebirth, doomsday, cultivating immortals and system are all popular types for users. These real-life content that requires huge sums of money to create can be generated by AI in a short time.
The content gaps left by real-life dramas for many years are being quickly occupied by AI at extremely low cost and in extremely short time.
At the same time, the quality of AI dramas is also iterating rapidly. With the iteration of AI production tools, creators are paying more attention to the creation of pictures, characters, makeup and plots.
While traditional costume dramas are still staging outdated plots of vengeful heroines and applying the logic of fast-paced cool points of short dramas, the AI costume drama track has shown a situation of "a hundred flowers blooming" in painting style.
The third season of AI ancient costume romance drama *Green Plum by the Inkstone* is about to be broadcast, and it has its own audience. The painting styles of monster-themed AI dramas *Not a Demon*, *The Record of Hundred Ghosts* and *Flowers of the Mirror* also have their own characteristics, among which *Not a Demon* has received 3.75 million likes since the second episode was launched; there are also AI Xianxia dramas that are far better than the low-cost special effects of traditional works. Some people use more exquisite painting styles to present Xianxia narratives, and some choose to unlock the ancient charm painting style. *Cyber Journey to the West* even designs modern images for the protagonists. Not to mention the diversified expression methods, in the AI costume drama track, the aesthetic level of creators is also amazing.
The author of *Not a Demon*, "Never Eats Pickled Mustard Greens", was originally a post-photography editor of the plot account @Jiang Wenyu. By chance, he began to devote himself to the creation of AI dramas, applying his original understanding of content and scheduling of shots accumulated in his work experience to the plot. He plans to make five or six episodes of *Not a Demon*, but the process is not simple. He will consult a lot of materials to generate the painting style he wants, find the expression suitable for himself, and then complete the creation of this drama from 0 to 1.
In this process, the dubbing is done by voice actors he found. At the same time, he also purchases some line drafts, and completes the character generation on LibTV to avoid copyright infringement and the problem of all characters looking the same as internet celebrities. "Some of the images and makeup in the drama serve the narrative. For example, the clothes of Lord Mang are made of a golden python, and his hat is decorated with two little snakes." This is also the reason why *Not a Demon* became popular. When AI characters have their own unique modeled faces and clothing symbols, the characters will also be impressive.
Even for a frame of the scene "painting scroll abducting children", he tried more than 50 times before overturning and remaking it, just to make the shot more vivid. The cost of a single episode of this drama is beyond the imagination of many people. The six-minute plot of the second episode even costs about 10,000 yuan.
Like "Never Eats Pickled Mustard Greens", Spongecake, a Douyin AI creator, has invested a lot in domestic American dramas. Since March this year, she has maintained a stable update frequency, and shows the "daily life" of the protagonists in another account. Spongecake not only writes her own ideas into scripts, but also constantly adds character movement designs as the number of productions increases, making the audience more immersed in watching dramas. "For example, when I make a panoramic shot, the character stands at position A, but when I switch to a close-up, his background may become B, which will make the audience feel disconnected." Behind the wonderful AI dramas is the creators' pursuit of excellence in production quality.
Producing one episode of domestic American drama takes Spongecake about 20 to 30 hours, and a full season of domestic American drama costs her about 30,000 yuan in production cost.
This may be another truth of AI dramas: everyone thinks they are shoddy, but compared with real-life dramas that spend a lot of money on star salaries, AI dramas ensure that most of the cost is used for better content itself, spent on the plot, characters and picture presentation. So you will find that many AI dramas are more sophisticated than real-life dramas in terms of lens language and character recognition.
In addition to the platform's incentive subsidies, Spongecake has realized the commercialization of AI domestic American dramas. Because of the fashionable and exquisite painting style, many cosmetics brands have come to inquire about advertising cooperation. But in order to ensure the quality of content, Spongecake only implanted one advertisement for Proya in the drama.
After the AI modeling technology becomes more mature, brands have come one after another, discovering new possibilities in the new field of AI dramas plus short videos: in the future, AI costume dramas, domestic American dramas, Korean dramas and Japanese dramas may all welcome brand investment that fits the content scenarios.
Netizens have already joined the carnival of this AI drama outbreak. The female lead Fang Taozi from *The Laid-off Girl* appeared on *COSMO Magazine*; Yan Jiming from *Green Plum by the Inkstone* became popular in the real-life short video field, and made "collaborative shooting" short videos with real netizens; some netizens even ranked the AI male leads from the most impressive to the least impressive with real emotions. From questioning, understanding to participating, netizens only spent half a year.
Jia Jia, who works in the media industry, told Ciwei Gongshe (ID: ciweigongshe) that when she went back to her hometown, she found that the whole family, old and young, as well as her girlfriends, were watching AI dramas and AI comic dramas. Xianxia and urban romance are the categories that everyone clicks frequently. "My aunt told me that when she went to buy breakfast earlier, the pancake stall owner was also chasing AI dramas." The sinking market phenomenon brought by the short drama boom has now appeared in the AI drama field.
In just half a year, AI short dramas have occupied the sinking market, which is much faster than the development speed of traditional short dramas. When the creation right really returns to the hands of users, in the field of AI dramas, you can almost find whatever you want to watch. The tolerance of users is only proportional to the wonderful degree of the content, and has little to do with whether the characters are real people or not.