Chinese short dramas turned into AI content factories
China's short-drama industry—a $3B+ market of 15-minute episodes consumed on mobile—is now almost entirely AI-generated. Studios use language models to write scripts in bulk, synthetic voices for dialogue, and text-to-video to produce visuals.
• No crews, minimal human edits, turnaround measured in days
• Revenue splits favor platforms over creators; writers earn cents per episode
• Quality collapse: repetitive plots, inconsistent characters, uncanny visual artifacts