From 400,000-yuan commercial deals to million-yuan level incentives, how lucrative are AI super creators?

Students who are still in their third year of college earn over 10,000 yuan per month by making videos with AI; after traditional advertising practitioners transition to AI, their project quotation ranges from 5,000 yuan to 30,000 yuan per minute, and their monthly salary has increased by more than 10 times from 10,000 yuan. Top AI accounts with millions of fans can charge as high as 400,000 yuan for a single commercial order...

AI video creators are starting to make money.

Since May this year, when the domestic AI production known as "Chinese Love, Death & Robots" *Zombie Scavenger* went viral, UGC AI videos have entered a high-speed growth window period.

The recently concluded Douyin AI Creator Competition attracted 170,000 participants in 72 days, generating more than 500 videos with over 10 million views; the cumulative total views of related topics exceeded 100 billion. Among them, the gold award video *Closure* received 1 million yuan in cash incentives; hit plot videos such as *Not a Monster*, *I Have No Time to Live Anyway* and *Bone Reading* received 200,000 yuan in incentives.

The entire industry is seizing this 4-month window period.

The Agent war between platforms has broken out. Computing power support, cash incentives and creator programs have been launched one after another. The first sum of money that creators earn mostly comes from platform incentives and playback revenue. After the account gains stable traffic, a new revenue chain starts to take shape, covering brand commercial orders, customized production, content contracting and IP development.

Traffic is gathering rapidly, and creators are also expanding fast. Practitioners from the film, advertising, art, gaming and other industries are entering the market one after another, and MCNs and OPCs have begun to build account matrices. More than one top AI super creator told Entertainment Capital Theory that since they started updating AI short videos, they "work from morning to night without a single day of rest."

After all, while colleges and universities are still teaching "fundamentalist" directing and editing theories, and a large number of film and television companies are steering their huge ships in new directions, this group of people who are trying to "play with AI" already have their own income, orders and businesses.

# This article has interviewed four relevant people, who are also the 293rd to 296th interviewees interviewed by "Entertainment Capital Theory" in 2026

The first sum of money earned by AI creators is "war gains" from the Agent war

In 2026, the battlefield of AI videos started from large models, transitioned to Agent canvases, and gradually spread to creators.

After all, essentially all model capabilities are called through APIs. It is increasingly difficult for Agents to form obvious differences by simply competing on "which model they are connected to". In the second half of the competition, the product paths of all players are becoming more and more similar.

At this stage, the value of creators has been elevated. After all, only when creators use Agents to produce hit works can platforms have cases and public influence. As a result, various platforms have begun to compete for creators: giving cash, providing free computing power, pushing traffic, offering exposure, and retaining talents through competitions and signing agreements.

For creators, the first dividend is that they no longer need to bear the cost of computing power themselves.

AI video creation has a very practical threshold: expensive computing power.

Chunye, the creator of the thriller-themed AI drama *Residual Corpse*, is currently a junior college student with only 1,500 yuan a month for living expenses, but he had to bear the computing power cost himself at the very beginning. He recalled that to save money, he "only ate one meal a day, because it was impossible to tell my family that I wanted to do AI and ask them for money." Sometimes he even had to borrow money from classmates to buy computing power.

To ensure quality, a 1-minute piece of content needs at least 5 rounds of generation to get one usable material. The generation cost can reach 10,000 points, equivalent to about 1,200 yuan, making the production cost of one video close to 10,000 yuan.

*Residual Corpse* can continue to be produced because the blogger @AI Bibi Dao connected Chunye to SenseTime Seko. After becoming a signed creator of SenseTime, he obtained unlimited computing power resources, and the production cost that he originally had to bear was compressed to zero.

For creators who are still in the trial and error stage, the value of this kind of support is even more direct than a bonus. Whether a video can be generated multiple times, or whether an idea can be further developed, most likely depends on whether they have enough points in hand.

After that, there comes more direct traffic and cash incentives. Creators thus become the first group of people to get actual returns in this Agent war.

On September 21, Jimeng AI and Skylark AI almost simultaneously upgraded their creator programs, giving tiered incentives based on the number of views. Works with 20 million views or 1 million likes can get 60,000 yuan, plus an additional 10,000 yuan premium canvas reward, the maximum reward for a single work can reach 70,000 yuan.

Two days later, LibTV also upgraded its social media incentives: the like threshold for ordinary creators to get cash rewards was reduced from 200,000 to 100,000, the maximum reward for a single work was increased from 60,000 yuan to 100,000 yuan, the overall reward tiers were raised by 1.2 to 6 times, and a 72-hour fast reward mechanism was added.

In short, you get rewards if your work has traffic; you get additional rewards if you add the canvas tag; if your work gains greater public influence, you will get more traffic, exposure and follow-up resources. AI Bibi Dao made a vivid joke to Entertainment Capital Theory: "We are now in a stage of chaotic battles across the industry, platforms are all in an arms race, and we are the ones reaping the war gains."

He is a top AIGC content review blogger on Douyin, and also the founder of the AI creator alliance "Interframe Creation". Apart from producing AI content himself, he also helps creators connect with platform signing opportunities, commercial orders and related resources, matching potential creators with platform computing power, competitions and other resources.

His own account is a typical example: multiple platforms need creators to produce content, do promotion, add tags and attach watermarks, so he has obtained more platform cooperation opportunities.

As for how many new users each round of investment can bring to the platform in the end, AI Bibi Dao said that it is no longer the period of massive user growth, "its actual conversion rate is hard to predict, but when all platforms are doing this, no one can easily stop first."

In his view, almost all top AI creators who have seized the window period and dividend period can "live very comfortably" relying on incentives. "They can earn tens of thousands of yuan, or even nearly 100,000 yuan per month through incentives, plus some commercial orders, their monthly income can reach hundreds of thousands of yuan."

AI illustration by Entertainment Capital Theory

Apart from platform incentives, the quotation of commercial orders and content contracting is on the rise

Now the income of AI creators comes from three layers: Agent incentives + short video playback revenue, commercial orders, and content contracting.

The "war gains" from Agents are still the most widely covered source of income at present. A large number of AI creators are still trying to obtain short video traffic through stable updates and exquisite production, so as to attract Agents to sponsor computing power, provide support, get actual returns to reduce production costs, and then continue to update stably.

After the AI creator's account forms stable traffic, the second layer of income will appear: commercial orders.

In the commercial order track, two different types of businesses have emerged: one type sells advertisements around the account and fans, the other type completes brand content relying on the creator's production capabilities.

The commercial orders in the AI track have begun to have a price system close to that of traditional top content accounts.

At present, the quotation for commercial orders of more than 60 seconds for the account "Fang Taozi" of the AI short drama *The Laid-off Girl* has reached 258,000 yuan. When AI characters start to have their own fans, content and commercial quotations, a character in the short drama can continue to stay on the platform as an independent IP.

On the other hand, pure content-oriented AI accounts have also generated high-priced commercial orders.

The account "Old Dream Gramophone" produces AI content that evokes emotional resonance, and currently has 1.11 million fans. It is reported that the quotation for a single commercial order of this account is 400,000 yuan, and multiple works with millions of likes have entered brand cooperation, covering automobiles, home appliances, food and many other categories.

Most of the commercial orders received by AI Bibi Dao are content that promotes Agents, and the quotation for a single order is also above 50,000 yuan.

The third layer is content contracting.

Most of the content on AI Bibi Dao's account is contracted by signed creators. After the brand puts forward specific content requirements, he will find suitable people from the signed creators to complete it. These creators are responsible for the whole production process from creativity, picture design to final finished video.

For example, the AI video production orders that Chunye receives now have a quotation ranging from 10,000 to 20,000 yuan per piece. Many of his contracting projects come from the commercial demands of AI Bibi Dao.

Advertising films, game PVs, plot short films, brand visual content, all can become such projects.

Creators now have three paths to monetization: platform rewards depend on work data, account commercial orders depend on fans and traffic, and contracting projects depend on whether the creator can produce the finished video and how much the production costs.

@Canned Visual, the creator of the million-likes hit AI video *Life Regret Game*, is an advertiser who transitioned to AI from the traditional advertising industry. His current income comes from taking advertising contracting projects. He completes most of the project contracting by himself, and cooperates with others only for complex projects.

He told Entertainment Capital Theory that the contracting quotation for an AI advertisement ranges from 5,000 yuan to 30,000 yuan per minute. A 5,000-yuan project may only have one character and one scene, for example, a girl holding milk tea outdoors; a 30,000-yuan project may require more characters (such as 3-6 roles) and more scene changes (3-10 scenes).

The duration of the finished video is almost the same, but the workload of pre-production character design, scene design, shot design, and subsequent revisions is completely different. If the brand's product has not been included in the AI database and additional training is required, the price will continue to rise.

Canned Visual spends about several thousand yuan on tokens every month, and the consumption may reach tens of thousands yuan when the usage is high. But after actually entering commercial projects, the model cost only affects the low-end and mid-end market. What affects high-end delivery is the stable work traffic, as well as the labor cost and communication cost of super creators. Creativity, testing, generation, revision, customer communication and delivery often take up a lot of time.

At present, earning money through Agent incentives is still the mainstream for creators, because commercial orders and content contracting have thresholds for account traffic and production capabilities.

AI Bibi Dao estimates that if 100 AI creators who are trying commercialization are gathered together, only about 10 of them can stably receive commercial orders, and only 1 to 2 of them can continuously get high-priced contracting projects.

More than one AI super creator told Entertainment Capital Theory that long video platforms have also thrown out olive branches one after another, inviting creators to make AI long videos or revenue-sharing dramas. But they are not considering these opportunities, "Now we have people supporting our computing power for short videos, views can be converted into actual returns, the income from contracting short content is also good, and the updated content will accumulate part of the audience to make the traffic stable. In this case, why should we bet on a revenue-sharing model with long production cycle and uncertain traffic?"

AI creators begin to unite, the one-person business is growing into a formal industry

Looking back at these AI super creators that Entertainment Capital Theory has contacted in the past two months, their backgrounds are very diverse: traditional film and television practitioners are transforming, students majoring in film and television, animation and digital media are entering the market through self-study, advertisers, game practitioners and art workers are also bringing their original work experience into AI creation.

There are also some people who are not closely related to video production, who have found new expression methods in AI content relying on their original professional capabilities.

@Yier Shansi, the creator of the ongoing million-likes hit original AI light comedy "The Top Killer in the World Is Taking Care of a Girl", is one of them.

Before doing AI creation, he was an electronic music producer and DJ who had been working in the music industry for 10 years. When AI Bibi Dao first came across his account, it only had a few thousand fans.

What really made him notice this account was its visuals. "The picture quality of this creator is very good, very distinctive and very trendy." Later when the two talked, he found that this creator was originally one of China's top 100 DJs and already had his own audience on music platforms.