How Chinese short dramas became AI content machines
How Chinese short dramas became AI content machines
中国短剧如何成为 AI 内容生产机器
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. “Two months,” the man says. “Give me an heir, or I will eat you.” The scene is from Carrying the Dragon King’s Baby, one of the many hundreds of short dramas that appear on apps like DramaWave and ReelShort. There’s just something about this one that isn’t 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. That’s because Carrying the Dragon King’s Baby is part of a new trend for making these shows entirely with AI: no actors, camera operators, cinematographers, or CGI specialists required.
在一间昏暗的卧室里，一名惊恐的年轻女子被一名高大强壮的男子扔到床上。他抓住她的手，火焰般的藤蔓爬满她的身体，与她的血肉融为一体。她悬浮起来，随后落下。她的胸前出现了一个龙形纹身。“两个月，”男人说道，“给我生个继承人，否则我就吃了你。”这一幕出自《怀了龙王的孩子》，这是 DramaWave 和 ReelShort 等应用上成百上千部短剧中的一部。但这部剧总有些地方显得不太对劲。虽然灯光看起来光鲜亮丽且具有电影感，但该剧有一种奇怪的视觉质感，介于电影和电子游戏过场动画之间。这是因为《怀了龙王的孩子》代表了一种新趋势：完全使用 AI 制作这些剧集，无需演员、摄影师、摄像师或 CGI 特效专家。
China’s 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’s 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’s short drama market reached roughly $6.9 billion in revenue, surpassing the country’s annual box office earnings for the first time.
自 2018 年推出以来，中国的短剧产业蓬勃发展。这些超短、情节狗血且往往带有色情擦边内容的剧集专为手机观看而设计，每集通常只有一两分钟长：观众只需 30 分钟到一个小时就能看完一整部剧。这些影片专为无尽的滑动浏览而制作，充满了情感冲突和戏剧性的情节反转。这一趋势的增长得益于各类应用在 TikTok、Instagram 和 Facebook 上投放大量充满悬念的广告，旨在诱导观众购买订阅服务。2024 年，中国短剧市场营收达到约 69 亿美元，首次超过了全国年度电影票房收入。
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. Now the industry is reinventing itself. Chinese short drama companies—already masters of low-budget, algorithmically optimized entertainment—are 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.
自 2022 年以来，中国短剧公司积极向海外扩张，翻译现有的热门剧集，并聘请当地演员制作本土化剧集。在全球范围内，短剧应用的累计下载量已接近 10 亿次。据研究公司 DataEye 数据显示，美国是中国以外最大的市场，贡献了约 50% 的营收。现在，该行业正在自我重塑。中国短剧公司——这些低成本、算法优化娱乐内容的行家里手——正在拥抱生成式 AI，以比以往更快、更廉价的方式生产内容。据 DataEye 统计，1 月份平均每天有 470 部 AI 生成的短剧发布。昆仑万维等短剧公司正在加大 AI 制作力度，精简摄制组，并从根本上重组劳动流程。对于一些工作室而言，AI 已从辅助工具转变为生产的核心支柱。
Infinite stories, infinite tropes. Short dramas are already famously low-budget. But AI has made them dramatically cheaper to mass-produce, helping to accelerate the entire process—and 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.
无限的故事，无限的套路。短剧向来以低成本著称。但 AI 使其大规模生产的成本大幅降低，有助于加速整个流程并节省开支。制作周期已大幅缩短。过去，构思、剧本创作、选角、拍摄和剪辑需要三到四个月。短剧平台 FlexTV 的副总裁唐唐（音译）表示，有了 AI，这个过程现在不到一个月就能完成。据唐唐介绍，在北美制作一部短剧曾经需要约 20 万美元，而 AI 可以将成本降低 80% 到 90%。
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’ apps. Decisions about what to produce next are often driven less by creative instinct than by performance data. “We look at what themes, plotlines, and writers resonate with audiences, then quickly adjust,” says Tang. The industry operates at a relentless pace. “Everyone expects quick returns,” Tang says. “In China, if a series doesn’t break even within a month, the industry considers it a failure.”
在进军美国市场后，中国短剧公司基本沿用了在中国的那套打法：在 TikTok、Facebook 和 YouTube 上大举买量；提供少量免费剧集；然后通过公司内部应用收费解锁剩余内容。决定下一步制作什么内容，往往不是基于创作直觉，而是基于表现数据。“我们会观察哪些主题、情节和编剧能引起观众共鸣，然后迅速调整，”唐唐说。该行业以一种无情的节奏运作。“每个人都期待快速回报，”唐唐说，“在中国，如果一部剧在一个月内不能回本，业内就会认为它失败了。”
As a result, screenwriters who spoke with MIT Technology Review said platforms often categorize projects using highly specific keywords that encompass everything from genre and setting to plot structure, such as “campus romance,” “gang rivalry,” “enemies to lovers,” or “rags to riches.” Recently, one of the most popular genres has been “reborn revenge,” a fantasy trope in which a wronged protagonist is miraculously reborn and given a chance to change their fate. “You 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,” says Phoenix Zhu, a freelance short drama screenwriter based in Suzhou. “It’s common to sacrifice narrative logic for shock value, because otherwise people are more likely to scroll away.”
因此，接受《麻省理工科技评论》采访的编剧们表示，平台通常使用非常具体的关键词来对项目进行分类，涵盖从类型、背景到情节结构的方方面面，例如“校园恋爱”、“帮派斗争”、“欢喜冤家”或“屌丝逆袭”。最近，最受欢迎的类型之一是“重生复仇”，这是一种奇幻套路，即受委屈的主角奇迹般地重生，并获得改变命运的机会。“你必须在整部剧中保持极高的情感强度，反复使用同样的剧情手段：突发死亡、背叛、肢体暴力、激烈的冲突，”常驻苏州的自由短剧编剧 Phoenix Zhu 说，“为了追求冲击力而牺牲叙事逻辑是很常见的，因为否则人们更有可能直接划走。”
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. “People’s attention spans are getting shorter, and serialized drama naturally has to get shorter,” says Han “Daniel” Fang, the CEO of Kunlun Tech.
这些简单的套路使得这种形式特别适合 AI 生成式制作。今年早些时候，FlexTV 停止了所有传统拍摄的制作，完全转向 AI 生成的短剧。DramaWave 和 FreeReels 等短剧应用的母公司昆仑万维于 2025 年开始制作 AI 短剧，目前在其平台上提供超过 1000 部 AI 作品。另一家面向全球市场的热门短剧公司 StoReels 表示，其目标是每月制作 100 部 AI 短剧。“人们的注意力持续时间越来越短，系列剧自然也必须变得更短，”昆仑万维首席执行官方汉（Daniel Fang）表示。
Fang told MIT Technology Review 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. “We want to bring the amount of AI work to 20% of the platform,” Fang says. 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. “No one comes to short dramas expecting high
方汉告诉《麻省理工科技评论》，公司不会停止对真人拍摄的传统短剧的投资。但公司正在扩大 AI 生成内容的制作，并逐渐增加其在平台上的份额，以此作为一种低成本的方式来尝试新的类型、主题和创意。“我们希望将 AI 作品的比例提升到平台内容的 20%，”方汉说。这种形式在海外也增长迅速。研究公司 Omdia 估计，全球微短剧市场在 2025 年达到 110 亿美元，到 2026 年底将增长至 140 亿美元。预计美国今年将在该市场产生 15 亿美元的营收。“没有人会带着对高质量的期待来看短剧。”