Imagine a dimly lit bedroom where a young woman is abruptly thrown onto a bed. A tall, muscular man grabs her hand, and flame-like vines instantly crawl across her body, merging with her flesh. She levitates for a moment, then drops, a dragon-shaped tattoo now emblazoned across her chest.
“Two months,” the man declares. “Give me an heir, or I will eat you.” This dramatic scene is from “Carrying the Dragon King’s Baby,” just one of hundreds of short dramas captivating viewers on apps like DramaWave and ReelShort. Yet, something feels subtly off about it—the glossy, cinematic lighting contrasts with an unusual visual texture, blurring the line between a movie and a video game cutscene.
The reason for this uncanny valley effect? “Carrying the Dragon King’s Baby” is at the forefront of a groundbreaking trend: these shows are now being made entirely with Artificial Intelligence (AI). This means no traditional actors, camera operators, cinematographers, or CGI specialists are needed, signaling a profound shift in content creation.
The Rise of Ultra-Short Dramas
China’s short drama industry has experienced an explosive boom since its inception in 2018. These ultra-short, often melodramatic and suggestive shows are specifically designed for smartphone viewing, with episodes typically lasting just one or two minutes. Viewers can easily binge an entire series in as little as 30 minutes to an hour, making them perfect for endless scrolling.
These films are engineered for maximum engagement, packed with emotional confrontations and dramatic plot twists. Their growth is largely fueled by aggressive advertising campaigns on TikTok, Instagram, and Facebook, where cliffhanger-heavy ads lure viewers into purchasing subscriptions. In 2024, China’s short drama market generated an estimated $6.9 billion in revenue, remarkably surpassing the country’s annual box office earnings for the first time.
Since 2022, Chinese short drama companies have embarked on an aggressive global expansion, translating existing hits and producing localized series with international actors. Globally, these short drama apps have accumulated nearly a billion downloads. The United States stands as the largest market outside of China, accounting for approximately 50% of the revenue, according to research firm DataEye.
AI Revolutionizes Production
The industry is now undergoing a significant transformation. Chinese short drama companies, already adept at creating low-budget, algorithmically optimized entertainment, are fully embracing generative AI to produce content faster and more affordably than ever before. DataEye reports that an average of 470 AI-generated short dramas were released every day in January alone.
Companies like Kunlun Tech are rapidly scaling up their AI productions, significantly reducing film crews and restructuring the entire labor pipeline. For some studios, AI has transitioned from being a supportive tool to forming the very backbone of their production process. While short dramas are already known for their low budgets, AI has made mass production dramatically cheaper and faster.
Production timelines have drastically shrunk. What once took three to four months for conceptualization, scriptwriting, casting, shooting, and editing can now be completed in less than a month with AI, according to Tang Tang, vice president at short-drama platform FlexTV. Moreover, producing a short drama in North America, which once cost around $200,000, can now see an 80% to 90% reduction in cost thanks to AI.
After entering the US market, Chinese short drama companies largely replicated their successful domestic playbook. This involved aggressively buying traffic on platforms like TikTok, Facebook, and YouTube, offering a few free episodes, and then charging viewers to unlock the rest within their proprietary apps. Production decisions are often driven by performance data rather than purely creative instincts. “We look at what themes, plotlines, and writers resonate with audiences, then quickly adjust,” explains Tang.
The industry operates at a relentless pace, demanding quick returns. “In China, if a series doesn’t break even within a month, the industry considers it a failure,” Tang emphasizes. Consequently, screenwriters often work with highly specific keywords that dictate genre, setting, and plot structure, such as “campus romance” or “reborn revenge,” a popular fantasy trope where a wronged protagonist gets a second chance to alter their destiny.
“You have to maintain an extremely high emotional intensity throughout the show, often reusing the same plot devices like sudden deaths, betrayals, and huge confrontations,” says Phoenix Zhu, a freelance short drama screenwriter. “Sacrificing narrative logic for shock value is common, as it prevents people from scrolling away.” These simple yet effective tropes make the format particularly compatible with AI-generated production.
A Shifting Landscape for Creators
Earlier this year, FlexTV completely halted all traditionally shot productions, shifting entirely to AI-generated dramas. Kunlun Tech, parent company of DramaWave and FreeReels, started producing AI-generated short dramas in 2025 and now boasts over 1,000 AI titles. StoReels, another prominent short drama company, aims to produce 100 AI-generated dramas monthly for its global audience.
Han “Daniel” Fang, CEO of Kunlun Tech, believes shorter attention spans necessitate shorter serialized dramas. While Kunlun Tech will continue investing in traditional short dramas with human actors, Fang states they are expanding AI-generated productions to comprise 20% of their platform’s content. This allows them to experiment with new genres and themes cost-effectively. The global microdrama market is projected to reach $11 billion in 2025 and $14 billion by the end of 2026, with the US expected to generate $1.5 billion this year.
Investor Shangguan Hong notes, “No one comes to short dramas expecting high art. The short-drama industry already stands out from traditional TV and filmmaking by being real-time and data-driven. AI only furthers that logic.” This AI revolution is fundamentally altering the roles required for short drama production. For instance, screenwriter Phoenix Zhu, who started in 2025 after facing a tough job market, found her first script sold for about 20,000 yuan (approximately $2,945).
However, the arrival of AI led to the abrupt cancellation of two contracted projects and a stagnation in industry rates. While writers like Zhu have been affected, many traditional production roles have vanished almost entirely from AI-generated productions. FlexTV’s Tang notes that production teams can now shrink to around 10 people, often consisting of Chinese writers and producers who understand the unique pacing of short dramas, even for overseas content.
Instead of camera crews and visual effects teams, AI productions now rely on smaller groups of producers, writers, AI directors, and “AI asset curators.” An AI asset curator translates scripts into prompts, generating reference images for AI video models. Hundreds of job listings for this role, often requiring only familiarity with AI tools, are appearing on Chinese job sites. Hanzhong Bai, an AI short-drama producer, notes that curators use prompts like “combine the faces of these celebrities I like” and utilize tools such as Google’s Nano Banana, ByteDance’s Seedance, and Kuaishou’s Kling.
For producers like Bai, AI also makes it economically viable to produce genres previously too expensive for short dramas, especially fantasy series requiring elaborate visual effects. “We’ll see many more dragon and mermaid shows for exactly this reason,” Bai predicts. The compressed production cycle also impacts writing, with platforms now expecting scripts within a month instead of two to three. Scripts can be rougher, as visuals and plot details can be adjusted later through prompts.
Writers increasingly have to write for AI models as much as for human audiences. Zhu now describes scenes with far greater visual specificity, taking on responsibilities once handled by cinematographers. “Before AI, ‘He gave her a cold stare’ might have been enough,” Zhu explains. “Now I might need to write, ‘Cold beams of light shot out from his eyes.'” Kunlun Tech’s Fang believes the future quality of AI-generated short dramas is ultimately a numbers game. “Good ideas and good writing still stand out,” Fang says. “The quality will improve simply because more people with strong ideas will be able to make their shows.”
Source: MIT Tech Review – AI
