{"id":22965,"date":"2026-05-15T09:32:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-15T09:32:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/15\/chinese-short-dramas-ai\/"},"modified":"2026-05-15T09:32:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-15T09:32:15","slug":"chinese-short-dramas-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/2026\/05\/15\/chinese-short-dramas-ai\/","title":{"rendered":"How Chinese short dramas became AI content machines"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

In a dimly lit bedroom, a frightened young woman is thrown onto a bed by a tall, muscular man. He grabs her hand, and flame-like vines crawl across her body, fusing with her flesh. She levitates, then drops. A dragon-shaped tattoo appears across her chest.<\/p>\n

\u201cTwo months,\u201d the man says. \u201cGive me an heir, or I will eat you.\u201d<\/p>\n

The scene is from Carrying the Dragon King\u2019s Baby<\/em>, one of the many hundreds of short dramas that appear on apps like DramaWave and ReelShort. There\u2019s just something about this one that isn\u2019t quite right. The lighting may be glossy and cinematic, but the show has an odd visual texture like something between a movie and a video game cutscene.\u00a0<\/p>\n

That\u2019s because Carrying the Dragon King\u2019s Baby <\/em>is part of a new trend for making these shows entirely with AI: no actors, camera operators, cinematographers, or CGI specialists required.<\/p>\n

China\u2019s short drama industry has boomed since its launch, in 2018. These ultrashort, melodramatic, and often smutty shows are designed for smartphone viewing, with episodes often running just one or two minutes long: Viewers can finish an entire series in as little as 30 minutes to an hour. The films are made for endless scrolling, packed with emotional confrontations and melodramatic plot twists. The trend\u2019s growth is driven by apps that bombard TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook with cliffhanger-heavy ads designed to lure viewers into buying subscriptions. In 2024, China\u2019s short drama market reached roughly $6.9 billion in revenue, surpassing the country\u2019s annual box office earnings for the first time.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Since 2022, Chinese short drama companies have aggressively expanded overseas, translating existing hits and producing localized series featuring local actors. Globally, short drama apps have approached a billion cumulative downloads. The United States is the biggest market outside of China, providing around 50% of the revenue, according to research firm DataEye.<\/p>\n

Now the industry is reinventing itself. Chinese short drama companies\u2014already masters of low-budget, algorithmically optimized entertainment\u2014are embracing generative AI to produce content faster and cheaper than ever. An average of 470 AI-generated short dramas were released every day in January, according to DataEye. Short-drama companies like Kunlun Tech are ramping up AI productions, shrinking film crews, and reorganizing the labor pipeline from the ground up. For some studios, AI has moved from being a supporting tool to providing the backbone of production itself.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Infinite stories, infinite tropes<\/strong><\/h3>\n

Short dramas are already famously low-budget. But AI has made them dramatically cheaper to mass-produce, helping to accelerate the entire process\u2014and save money. Production timelines have collapsed. Conceptualization, script writing, casting, shooting, and editing used to take three to four months. With AI, the process can now take less than a month, says Tang Tang, vice president at short-drama platform FlexTV. Producing a short drama in North America once cost roughly $200,000, but AI can cut that cost by 80% to 90%, according to Tang.<\/p>\n

After expanding into the US market, Chinese short drama companies largely followed the same playbook they used in China: Buy traffic aggressively on TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube; offer a handful of free episodes; then charge viewers to unlock the rest inside the companies\u2019 apps. Decisions about what to produce next are often driven less by creative instinct than by performance data. \u201cWe look at what themes, plotlines, and writers resonate with audiences, then quickly adjust,\u201d says Tang.<\/p>\n

The industry operates at a relentless pace. \u201cEveryone expects quick returns,\u201d Tang says. \u201cIn China, if a series doesn\u2019t break even within a month, the industry considers it a failure.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

As a result, screenwriters who spoke with MIT Technology Review<\/em> said platforms often categorize projects using highly specific keywords that encompass everything from genre and setting to plot structure, such as \u201ccampus romance,\u201d \u201cgang rivalry,\u201d \u201cenemies to lovers,\u201d or \u201crags to riches.\u201d Recently, one of the most popular genres has been \u201creborn revenge,\u201d a fantasy trope in which a wronged protagonist is miraculously reborn and given a chance to change their fate.<\/p>\n

\u201cYou kind of have to keep the emotional intensity extremely high throughout the show, using the same plot devices over and over again: sudden deaths, betrayals, physical violence, huge confrontations,\u201d says Phoenix Zhu, a freelance short drama screenwriter based in Suzhou. \u201cIt\u2019s common to sacrifice narrative logic for shock value, because otherwise people are more likely to scroll away.\u201d<\/p>\n

Those simple tropes have made the format particularly compatible with AI-generated production. Earlier this year, FlexTV halted all traditionally shot productions and shifted entirely to AI-generated dramas. Kunlun Tech, the parent company of drama apps DramaWave and FreeReels, began producing AI-generated short dramas in 2025 and now offers more than 1,000 AI titles on its platforms. StoReels, another popular short drama company targeting a global audience, has said it aims to produce 100 AI-generated dramas per month.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople\u2019s attention spans are getting shorter, and serialized drama naturally has to get shorter,\u201d says Han \u201cDaniel\u201d Fang, the CEO of Kunlun Tech. Fang told MIT Technology Review<\/em> that the company is not going to stop investing in traditionally shot short dramas with real actors. But the company is expanding AI-generated productions and gradually increasing their share on its platforms as a low-cost way to experiment with new genres, themes, and ideas. \u201cWe want to bring the amount of AI work to 20% of the platform,\u201d Fang says.<\/p>\n

The format is also rapidly growing overseas. Research firm Omdia estimates that the global microdrama market reached $11 billion in 2025 and will grow to $14 billion by the end of 2026. The United States is expected to generate $1.5 billion in revenue in that market this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cNo one comes to short dramas expecting high art,\u201d says investor Shangguan Hong, former partner of Legend Capital. \u201cThe short-drama industry already stands out from traditional TV and filmmaking by being real-time and data-driven. AI only furthers that logic. In a sense, short drama is perfectly compatible with AI.\u201d<\/p>\n

Inside the content machine<\/strong><\/h3>\n

The industry\u2019s AI revolution is already changing the type of roles required to make short dramas.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Phoenix Zhu graduated from college in 2024 with a degree in philosophy. After months of rejections from traditional media and film studios, she eventually found work writing scripts for short dramas. \u201cIt was a very difficult job market for young people,\u201d Zhu says. \u201cI couldn\u2019t afford to be picky about what I wrote.\u201d<\/p>\n

To support herself, Zhu worked a string of part-time jobs, including as a barista, a flower seller, and an event coordinator, while taking freelance writing gigs online for advertising and education companies. In April 2025, she sold her first short-drama script for around 20,000 yuan (approximately $2,945). More commissions followed, and she thought her career was finally beginning to pick up.<\/p>\n

Then AI arrived. Two projects already in the contract stage were abruptly canceled, Zhu says. Rates across the industry began falling. The raises she expected as she gained more experience never materialized.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Still, writers like Zhu have been among the less disrupted workers in the industry. Many production roles on traditional filming sets have disappeared almost entirely from AI-generated productions.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe could shrink the production team down to around 10 people,\u201d says Tang, vice president at FlexTV. Like many companies in the industry, FlexTV relies primarily on Chinese writers and production teams, even for shows featuring non-Chinese characters and targeting overseas audiences. The reason is not just lower costs, Tang says, but also that Chinese writers better understand the pacing and narrative rhythm of short dramas.<\/p>\n

Instead of camera crews, lighting technicians, makeup artists, and visual effects teams, AI productions now rely on smaller groups consisting largely of producers, writers, AI directors, and \u201cAI asset curators.\u201d<\/p>\n

An AI asset curator translates scripts into prompts and generates reference images of characters, costumes, and scenes for AI video models to follow. MIT Technology Review<\/em> found hundreds of job listings for the role on Chinese job sites, many requiring little prior industry experience beyond familiarity with AI tools.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe technology has improved enormously just in the past few months,\u201d says Hanzhong Bai, an AI short-drama producer based in Beijing. Bai says it is common for AI asset curators to use prompts like \u201ccombine the faces of these celebrities I like\u201d when generating characters. Studios typically use a mix of tools, including Google\u2019s image-generation model Nano Banana, ByteDance\u2019s Seedance, and Kuaishou\u2019s Kling.<\/p>\n

For producers like Bai, AI also makes it economically viable to produce genres that were previously too expensive for short dramas, especially fantasy series requiring elaborate visual effects, costumes, or makeup. \u201cWe\u2019ll see many more dragon and mermaid shows for exactly this reason,\u201d Bai says.<\/p>\n

The compressed production cycle has also changed the writing process itself. Writers once had two to three months to finish a script. Now, Zhu says, platforms often expect delivery within a month. Scripts can also be rougher and more flexible, since scenes, visuals, and even plot details can be changed later through prompts.<\/p>\n

As a result, writers increasingly have to write for AI models as much as for human audiences. Zhu says she now has to describe scenes with far greater visual specificity, effectively taking on responsibilities once handled by cinematographers or visual effects teams.<\/p>\n

\u201cBefore AI, writing \u2018He gave her a cold stare\u2019 might have been enough,\u201d Zhu says. \u201cNow I might need to write, \u2018Cold beams of light shot out from his eyes.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Fang of Kunlun Tech believes the future quality of AI-generated short dramas is ultimately a numbers game. \u201cGood ideas and good writing still stand out,\u201d Fang says. \u201cThe quality [of AI short drama] will improve simply because more people with strong ideas will be able to make their shows.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In a dimly lit bedroom, a frightened young woman is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"content-type":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[226],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-22965","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22965","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=22965"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22965\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=22965"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=22965"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ideainthebox.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=22965"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}