A folksy, low-cost variety show produced single-handedly by one person is generating a monthly income of 500,000 yuan.

Real-life creators are getting fewer and fewer filming opportunities, while virtual AI-generated content is earning increasingly huge profits.

While the world's top internet celebrity Mr. Beast spends huge sums building sets, inviting contestants and raising massive prize pools for a single episode of his video.

On the other side, in the world of AI.

Doomsday crises for human survival happen every single day. Ancient packs of dire wolves invade, and 1000 humans have to use their own abilities to survive on the frozen tundra.

A civil engineer raises his hand, and an entire city rises from the ground, building an apocalypse shelter with bare hands.

An excavator operator summons the world's number one excavator from the sky, swings its long arm and knocks all the dire wolves away in one strike.

The fishing enthusiast also lives up to expectations, summoning an Air Force aircraft out of thin air.

In the most popular domestic food shows, top chefs from all over the country are racking their brains trying to make a seemingly ordinary dish of braised large intestine in nine turns look extremely creative.

But in AI food shows, a chef god from India is handling a huge pot of fatty large intestine of a prehistoric mosasaur from the Cretaceous period.

All the content mentioned above is the most popular variety show format on short video platforms right now.

Each episode is only 5 to 6 minutes long, these AI variety shows with no real-life people appearing on camera have already accumulated 200 million views just a few months after launch.

100% AI-generated performances, zero real human involvement, but audiences are enjoying them to the fullest.

"A single line from AI negates all the 7 days of hard work put in by these 1000 people".

"Isn't this way better than real variety shows? Just sit back and enjoy the thrill."

Even MediaStorm is scrolling through these AI variety show videos.

What could be so interesting about fully AI-generated variety shows? After doing some research, I found that current AI variety shows have evolved to a surprisingly advanced level.

They come in all kinds of forms. No matter it is real-life vlogs, food programs, competitive shows, romance variety shows or talent shows, AI can produce all of them.

For example, this competitive mini-variety show called 100,000 Challenges, which is like a budget-friendly version of Mr. Beast's shows.

By setting huge prize pools, anti-human or quirky challenge segments and multi-player PK competitions to stimulate the audience's nerves. While Mr. Beast offers a 1 million dollar reward, this show sets its prize as high as 1 billion US dollars.

Almost every episode gets millions of views, hundreds of thousands of likes and reposts.

Even talent shows that require fans to vote for their idols to debut can be fully replicated by AI.

This show called 12 Zodiac Trainee Competition personifies the 12 zodiac signs as virtual idols, making these virtual characters sing, dance, compete and form a final debut group through talent PK.

Only half a month after its premiere, the total popularity across all platforms has exceeded 100 million, and the account has gained more than 400,000 new followers.

The huge view count is not the most impressive part, what's more amazing is virtual contestants, real fan culture.

Every contestant in the show has their own personal Douyin account. Just like real idols, they compete for the ranking of the theme song's direct cam view count.

A large number of sincere fans are boosting data, managing public opinions and increasing the view count of their favorite characters' direct cam videos.

Some fans run data stations, some build fan support clubs, some create graphic design works. Audiences will also vote for their favorite characters, create fan fiction and ship CP pairs.

"Libra is the best, no explanation" , "Team A must overtake Team B, everyone come and swipe the data here".

Some fans even seriously count the direct cam likes and screen time of each AI contestant, and start to fight for rights when they think the screen time distribution is unfair...

The people who produce these AI variety shows operate exactly the same way as real variety show teams. The visuals are extremely realistic, many of them are so well made that you can hardly tell they are AI-generated.

To enhance the sense of immersion, AI idols even have "work paparazzi shots" just like real celebrities. That means before the idols start work, they will stop to interact and greet fans waiting on the roadside...

AI content that is completely generated with a single prompt even produces behind-the-scenes footage and dorm visit clips just like real shows...

Don't rush to laugh at this... Foreign audiences also love these AI shows.

Someone made a fruit-themed romance variety show, pairing banana men, strawberry women and chili ladies to fall in love with each other, which has accumulated 92 million views across the whole network.

It has already been renewed for the second season, and the new season is called "Vegetarian Island"...

Even Hunan TV created AI avatars of Wang Han and Ma Ke, and produced a fully AI version of the classic variety show "Super Talk Show".

The AI avatar of Wang Han even looks almost like the famous TV host Liu Yiwei.

You may still dismiss all these at this point, thinking they are just silly funny content made by internet users for fun.

But what if I tell you that the creators can earn hundreds of thousands of RMB per month?

Take the show 100,000 Challenges for example, it has released 28 videos in total, 21 of which have sponsorship from advertisers, Tencent, Haoshi Bread and many other brands are their long-term stable clients.

According to the data from Xingtu platform, the customized content price of 100,000 Challenges and 12 Zodiac Trainee Competition is around 148,000 RMB and 200,000 RMB respectively.

A large number of industry practitioners in the variety show sector are also extremely jealous of this new business track.

"Many people I haven't contacted for years, the first thing they talk to me about when we meet is AI variety shows." Liang Ayí, a senior director who has participated in the production of famous shows "U Can U Bibi" and "Roast", told me.

After talking with her, I found that AI variety shows are absolutely fatal temptation for variety show directors.

Many people may not know how a traditional variety show is produced.

Liang Ayí calculated the cost for me. Long-form talent shows like Produce 101 usually have a budget of several hundred million RMB. Even low-cost online mini-variety shows cost at least hundreds of thousands RMB per episode.

And a lot of the cost is unavoidable, just inviting celebrities to appear on the show takes up the majority of the budget. This is even under the regulation that the total remuneration for all performers in one episode shall not exceed 800,000 RMB, which the Chinese government enforced back in 2018.

Real-life mini-variety shows also face huge cost pressure. Tim once revealed that for the live broadcast of a wilderness survival show, the pure hardware cost alone has reached seven figures.