The boom of AI short dramas: Everyone can “create dramas”, but it’s easy to reduce costs and difficult to make money | Survey

In 2026, the AI short-form drama industry will experience explosive growth, yet also face structural contradictions. The market size has expanded rapidly; in the first five months, it exceeded 22 billion yuan, and it is expected to reach 40 billion yuan for the whole year. In the first quarter, AI-generated content accounted for over 95% of all short-form dramas launched. Production costs have been reduced from millions to tens of thousands of yuan, attracting approximately 500,000 creators to participate. However, the industry faces severe overcapacity issues, with over 90% of practitioners incurring losses. The popularity rate is only 0.12%, and the completion rate of top-rated real-person short-form dramas (over 40%) is much higher than that of AI-generated ones (generally less than 15%). To cope with the peak of domestic market demand and stricter regulations, some production capacity has been forced to shift overseas. At the same time, the industry has generated a new business model called “digital face authorization”: ordinary users can earn about 100 yuan per short video for authorizing their facial images, while professional actors are charged between 500 yuan and several thousand yuan depending on the scope of use and the length of the drama. Platforms and authorized parties share the profits proportionally.