From 400,000-yuan commercial orders to million-yuan level incentives, how much do top AI creators earn?

A junior college student earns over 10,000 yuan a month by making videos with AI; traditional advertising practitioners who transition to AI work now charge 5,000 to 30,000 yuan per minute for projects, with their monthly salary increasing more than 10 times from the original 10,000 yuan. Top AI accounts with millions of followers can charge as high as 400,000 yuan for a single commercial order...

AI video creators are starting to make real money.

Since the domestic AI production *Zombie Scavenger* dubbed the Chinese *Love, Death & Robots* became a hit last May, UGC AI videos have entered a high-speed growth window period.

The just-concluded Douyin AI Creator Contest attracted 170,000 participants in 72 days, producing more than 500 videos with over 10 million views; the total views of related topics exceeded 100 billion. The gold award video *Closure* received 1 million yuan in cash incentives; hit drama videos including *Not a Demon*, *No Time Left to Live Anyway* and *Bone Reading* received 200,000 yuan in incentives each.

The entire industry is seizing this 4-month window of opportunity.

The Agent war between platforms has broken out, with computing power support, cash incentives and creator programs launched one after another. The first sum of money most creators earned came from platform incentives and view revenue. After their accounts gain 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, the number of creators is also expanding fast, practitioners from the film, advertising, art, gaming and other industries are entering the sector one after another, and MCNs and OPCs have started to build account matrices. More than one top AI creator told *Entertainment Capital Review* that since they started updating AI short videos, they have been working from dawn to dusk without a single day off.

After all, while colleges and universities are still teaching "fundamentalist" directing and editing theories, and a large number of film companies are in the middle of a major strategic shift, this group of people who are trying to "play with AI" have already had their own income, orders and business.

# This article has interviewed four relevant people, who are also the 293rd to 296th interviewees of *Entertainment Capital Review* in 2026

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

In 2026, the battlefield of AI videos started from large models, transitioned to Agent canvas, and then gradually extended to creators.

After all, essentially all model capabilities are called through APIs. It is increasingly difficult for Agents to form obvious competitive advantages by simply competing on "which model they are connected to", and 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 is raised. After all, only when creators produce hit works with Agents can platforms have cases and public influence. As a result, all platforms are scrambling for creators: providing cash, giving free computing power, pushing traffic, offering exposure, and retaining talents through competitions and signing contracts.

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 AI drama *Crossing the Remains*, is still a junior student, with only 1,500 yuan a month for living expenses, but he had to bear the computing power cost by himself at the beginning. He recalled that in order to save money, he "only ate one meal a day, because it was impossible to tell my family that I was going to do AI and ask them for money." Sometimes he even had to borrow money from classmates to buy computing power resources.

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

*Crossing the Remains* can continue to be produced because the blogger @AI Chatty connected Chunye with SenseTime Seko. After becoming a signed creator of SenseTime, he obtained unlimited computing power resources, and the production cost that he originally needed to bear was reduced 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 several more times, or whether an idea can be further developed, most likely depends on whether they have enough points in hand.

After that, there are more direct traffic and cash incentives. Creators have thus become the first group of people to get real benefits in this Agent war.

On September 21, Jimeng AI and Skylark AI almost simultaneously upgraded their creator programs, giving tiered incentives based on the views of works: works with 20 million views or 1 million likes can get 60,000 yuan, plus a 10,000 yuan high-quality 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 range was increased by 1.2 to 6 times, and a new 72-hour incentive was added.

In short, works with traffic can get rewards; works tagged with the canvas can get additional superimposed rewards; works that achieve greater public influence can get more traffic, exposure and follow-up resources. AI Chatty made a vivid joke to *Entertainment Capital Review*: "We are now in a stage of chaotic wars in the industry, and all platforms are in an arms race, so we are the ones making war profits."

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

His own account is a very typical example: multiple platforms need creators to make content, spread information, add tags and embed watermarks, so he has obtained more platform cooperation opportunities.

As for how many new users each round of investment can bring to the platform, AI Chatty said that it is no longer the period of rapid 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 seize the window and dividend period now can "live very well" relying on incentives. "They can earn tens of thousands of yuan, even nearly 100,000 yuan a month through incentives, plus some commercial orders, their monthly income may reach hundreds of thousands of yuan."

AI illustration by *Entertainment Capital Review*

Apart from platform incentives, the prices of commercial orders and content contracting are on the rise

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

The "war profit" from Agents is still the most widely covered 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 and provide support, get real income to reduce production costs, and then maintain stable updates.

After AI creators' accounts gain stable traffic, the second layer of income will appear: commercial orders.

Two different types of business have emerged in the commercial order track: one sells advertising around accounts and fans, the other completes brand content relying on creators' production capabilities.

The price system of commercial orders in the AI track is already close to that of traditional top content accounts.

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

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

The account "Old Dream Gramophone" creates AI content that resonates emotionally, and currently has 1.11 million followers. 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 Chatty are content promoting Agents, and the quotation for a single order is also above 50,000 yuan.

The third layer of income is content contracting.

Most of the content on the AI Chatty 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 the work, and these creators are responsible for the whole production process from creativity, picture design to final finished video.

For example, the AI video production orders Chunye receives now are priced between 10,000 and 20,000 yuan per piece. Most of his contracting projects come from the commercial demands of AI Chatty.

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

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

@Can Visual, the creator of the million-likes hit AI video *Life Do-over Game*, is an advertiser who transitioned from the traditional advertising industry to AI, and his current income comes from taking advertising contracting projects. He completes most of the projects by himself, and seeks partners for complex projects.

He told *Entertainment Capital Review* that the contracting quotation for an AI advertisement is 5,000 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 videos 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 added to the AI database and additional training is required, the price will go even higher.

Can consumes about thousands of yuan in tokens every month, and the consumption may reach tens of thousands of yuan in peak periods, but after 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 of account traffic and production capacity.

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

More than one top AI creator told *Entertainment Capital Review* that long video platforms have also extended olive branches, inviting creators to make AI long-form videos or revenue-sharing dramas. But they are not considering these opportunities, "Now we have computing power support for short videos, views can be converted into real income, the income from contracting short content is also good, and the updated content will accumulate part of the audience to stabilize the traffic. In this case, why should we bet on a revenue-sharing model with long production cycle and uncertain traffic?"

AI creators are starting to unite, individual business is evolving into a formal industry

Looking back at these top AI creators that *Entertainment Capital Review* has contacted in the past two months, their backgrounds are very diverse: traditional film practitioners are transforming, students majoring in film, animation and digital media are teaching themselves to enter the industry, advertisers, game practitioners and art workers are also bringing their original work experience into AI content 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 abilities.

@Yiershan Temple, the creator of the ongoing million-likes hit original AI light comedy *"Top World Killer" Is Taking Care of a Girl*, is one of them.

Before making AI content, he was an electronic music producer and DJ, who had been working in the music industry for 10 years. When AI Chatty first came across his account, he only had a few thousand followers.

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