400,000 AI short dramas have begun to "harm the audience, degrade themselves, and ruin the entire industry"
On September 17, the official released a set of extremely staggering data.
In the first 8 months of this year, a total of 430,000 micro short dramas were launched nationwide, which is 13 times the total number of last year! Among them, AI-generated dramas account for more than 90%.
Corresponding to this set of figures is another number: 168 million — the daily active users of Hongguo Short Drama, which exceeds the sum of the four long video platforms iQiyi, Tencent Video, Youku and Mango TV.
There is no doubt that AI short dramas have achieved all-round explosive popularity.
The user base of AI dramas and comic dramas has risen from 120 million in 2025 to over 600 million in the first half of this year, a fivefold increase within one year. Netizens' attitude has also changed from the initial "physiological aversion to AI faces" to "hope you understand that AI does not need to rest".
At the same time, live-action film and television has been severely impacted. The vacancy rate of studios in Hengdian World Studios is approaching 80%, and the number of short drama starts in the first quarter dropped by 3/4 year on year. Even some well-known stars have begun to publicly look for jobs.
But it seems that AI short dramas are about to dominate the whole market, in fact, they may have reached a very dangerous moment.
Since the beginning of this year, 68,000 non-compliant micro short dramas have been removed from the entire network. The revenue of AI short dramas per 10,000 views has plummeted from 30 to 100 yuan last year to 5 to 10 yuan this year.
AI short dramas have gone through the development path that takes others 10 years in just one year, and now they have to taste the side effect of rapid growth.
Wish-fulfilling Drama Mirrors Reality: 3 People Earn 6 Million Yuan in Half a Year
Just half a year ago, AI short dramas were still at the bottom of the contempt chain.
Zhang Chaoyang once stated that the content produced by AI has a strong plastic texture, just like tomatoes ripened with chemical fertilizers, with no flavor at all.
Many ordinary people also show obvious disgust, denouncing it as "electronic swill". Even the fans of AI short dramas had to admit half a year ago that AI short dramas had many obvious flaws, for example, the male and female leads almost shared the same set of facial feature templates, and "AI face" was once scolded to be a hot search topic on Weibo.
Some professionals also said that they suffered a lot, having their faces "stolen" and voices "stolen" by AI short dramas. In March this year, dozens of voice actors collectively spoke out for rights protection, demanding to stop unauthorized voice collection and synthesis.
No one expected that the AI short dramas which looked shoddily produced and hated by all would turn around so rapidly and violently.
Hongguo Short Drama did not set up an independent entrance for AI dramas until the beginning of this year. But by May, AI dramas for the first time accounted for more than half of the daily TOP100 list, and the proportion rose to about 70% by August. The must-watch list, hot search list and favorite list are all completely dominated by AI dramas.
The core reason is: in just half a year, AI short dramas have evolved from "watchable" to "highly engaging".
The primary driving force behind this is the sharp drop in costs.
For example, the popular AI short drama *The Legend of Ten Thousand Demons* only has a core team of 3 people and registered capital of 100,000 yuan, and has launched 12 seasons in half a year, with a conservative estimated profit of 6 million yuan. Industry insiders revealed that producing a 100-episode live-action short drama requires a team of dozens of people and at least one week of shooting period, while the core production team of an AI short drama only needs 3 to 5 people, and the cost is only 1/10 or even lower than that of a live-action drama.
After the production threshold was lowered, "folk masters" have made efforts one after another. Although the quality is inevitably uneven, many widely recognized excellent works have emerged, which have changed many people's views.
For example, a young man from Yunnan spent 10 days making the AI short film *Zombie Scavenger* at home, which became a hit at home and abroad overnight, and even attracted Hollywood producers to look for him all over the internet.
Another work *Not a Demon* was created by a post-90s creator, who took full charge of screenwriting, production and editing. After two episodes were launched, the number of followers of the account rose from 1,000-2,000 to 540,000, with a total of more than 4 million likes. It is reported that in order to fix the style of the whole film, he spent about 6,000 yuan on the first key image and spent 4 to 5 days on it.
"Folk masters" have also filled the gaps in many content types, presenting a diverse landscape that brings a refreshing feeling to audiences.
The recently viral "AI idol drama" is a very good example. While most AI short dramas are still thinking about how to create a "wish-fulfilling" experience, "AI idol dramas" choose to upgrade the appearance of characters and picture quality, drawing materials from Korean dramas, Chinese dramas, Taiwanese dramas, Japanese dramas and American dramas. Typical examples include *Pretty Malice*, which tells the story of a Sichuan girl studying at a South Korean chaebol school, and its first episode got 3.31 million likes and nearly 47 million views on Douyin; *The Accident* restores the American high school campus scene, with nearly 55 million views for four episodes; *My Sister Is Not Cute*, whose heroine directly becomes the white moonlight in the hearts of many netizens.
*My Sister Is Not Cute*
With multiple factors superimposed, more and more audiences are addicted to these dramas.
Data shows that in the first half of 2026, the market size of China's AI short drama industry exceeded 220 billion yuan, and the whole-year figure is expected to hit 400 billion yuan, with a year-on-year increase of about 138%.
400 Billion Yuan AI Short Drama Market: One Winner Stands Out Amid Countless Losers
Getting rich overnight by making AI short dramas is undoubtedly a realistic wish-fulfilling drama, but the source of this pleasure lies in its rarity. Otherwise, it would be nothing special.
The same is true in the AI short drama industry: Only a very small number of people can reap the benefits.
In the first half of the year, more than 221,900 native AI dramas were launched on Douyin alone, with an average of more than 1,200 dramas per day. Among them, only 1,055 dramas have exceeded 100 million views, with a 100-million-view rate of 0.48%. Calculated based on the break-even line of 50 million views, less than 1.3% of the works can recover their costs.
Many people who joined the trend with full enthusiasm have gradually recognized the reality. A practitioner told reporters that he launched 47 dramas in the first half of the year, investing nearly 300,000 yuan in computing power, copyright, manpower and traffic promotion, but only 3 dramas reached the threshold of 10 million views, and the highest revenue sharing of one drama was less than 20,000 yuan, resulting in a net loss of more than 100,000 yuan in half a year.
Some people even said bluntly: "More than 90% of the companies that make AI short dramas have gone out of business."
Why is the situation so tough?
The primary reason is naturally the extremely fierce competition, and most works are doomed to be cannon fodder.
Secondly, AI has only greatly reduced the production cost, while other costs are rising steadily.
Lin Qiwen, Vice President of DataEye Drama Check, gave a set of comparison data: the production cost of AI short dramas has dropped by about 90%, but the traffic promotion cost has increased by more than 100% year on year, and the industry revenue has shrunk by more than 50%. Traffic promotion accounts for about 70% of the total cost of the whole link, and producers usually only get 4% to 7% of the total revenue sharing.
The data in the financial reports of listed companies is even more clear. Last year, the derivative business revenue of iReader Technology including short dramas reached 1.855 billion yuan, but the promotion fee cost 1.986 billion yuan; the short drama and AI short drama revenue of Kunlun Tech skyrocketed from 167 million yuan to 1.617 billion yuan, and the annual sales expenses also increased to 4.182 billion yuan.
More importantly, from the early development stage when scarcity drives high value to the involution stage where too many creators chase limited resources, the game rules are completely different.
In the early stage, platforms offered guaranteed revenue, so creators knew how much they could earn after finishing their works; later, the model turned to revenue sharing, meaning finishing a work only got you a ticket to the game, and how much you can earn totally depends on the number of views and platform traffic. For example, the guaranteed revenue for S+ level projects from Hongguo has dropped from 40,000-50,000 yuan all the way to 10,000 yuan.
In the end, apart from a small number of "folk masters" who produced high-quality works, most people who got dividends are the "shovel sellers".
The biggest winners are still the platforms.
Take Hongguo as an example. It has IP reserves from Tomato Novel in the upstream, and charges computing power fees through the Seedance series of models. In the midstream, it has two distribution positions: Hongguo Short Drama and Douyin. In the downstream, it has a mature advertising delivery system to undertake the traffic promotion budget. It basically earns money from computing power and advertising at the same time, and attracts a huge number of users with its free model.
Similarly, other platforms that hold IP or computing power resources are also developing rapidly. For example, the revenue of short dramas and AI comic dramas of Yuewen Group in the first half of the year reached 430 million yuan, a year-on-year increase of 230%.
Chen Jian, Chairman of Tomato Pictures, admitted frankly: "For companies that undertake