BEIJING, Nov. 12 (Xinhua) -- A five-member modern military unit lands in China's Northern Song Dynasty, armed with rifles, a medical kit and dwindling ammunition and fuel. This is the hook of Armed into the Song Dynasty -- one of the breakout AI-generated short dramas.
The series premiered Aug. 22 this year and has grown to 10 seasons and 1,000 episodes. Each runs under two minutes, with cumulative views topping 4 billion. Millions of viewers pre-ordered future seasons ahead of release.
The hit stands out for its grassroots crew. The six-person team includes a former ride-hailing driver, a delivery worker and an ex-office employee. Lead planner Zhang Hansheng, 54, only began teaching himself AI video generation last March.
HIGHER EFFICIENCY, LOWER COSTS
AI enables this large-scale, fast production. A small team can quickly render sprawling battlefields and costly set pieces, pumping out 100 episodes weekly to meet audience demand. Short runtimes suit fragmented viewing, and viewer feedback helps creators refine later installments.
Armed into the Song Dynasty is no outlier. AI is lowering barriers to short-drama production. Sci-fi title Guixu, launched in May, hit 100 million views on an investment of roughly 200,000 yuan (about 30,000 U.S. dollars). Its creator worked alone, with no formal film training.
The 12-episode series cost about 2,000 yuan in computing power per minute of runtime, with each episode around eight minutes long. A comparable traditional live-action sci-fi or disaster production could cost up to 100 times more.
Wider industry data shows even bigger efficiency gains. In the first quarter of 2026, premium AI short dramas cost roughly one-tenth as much as equivalent live-action short dramas. A 100-episode AI series can wrap in just three days.
AI also simplifies scripting, storyboarding, dubbing, translation and localization. Hao Cheng, an innovation specialist at Mango TV, said the technology will speed overseas expansion for Chinese short dramas. It adapts local internet references, costumes and settings for foreign viewers while preserving core plots, reducing reliance on separate local adaptation teams.
FAST-GROWING MARKET
China already has a huge audience for AI short dramas, with at least 600 million viewers.
Cao Shumin, head of the National Radio and Television Administration (NRTA), said in early November that around 550,000 micro and short dramas were released nationwide in the first 10 months of the year. That is 17 times the full-year total for 2025. More than 94 percent were AI-made.
The boom has reshaped the market. Analytics firm DataEye reported China's AI short-drama market exceeded 22 billion yuan in the first five months of the year, with a full-year forecast of 40 billion yuan.
Major Chinese tech firms are racing for market share. Tencent rolled out an AI short-drama streaming platform in September, building a full pipeline from production to distribution. ByteDance and Kuaishou launched their AI generation and playback platforms earlier and now serve as major tool providers for creators.
ByteDance's Hongguo app features AI short dramas as core content. It reached 168 million daily active users in July, up 107 percent year on year, and hit 430 million total users by September. Those figures cover all short-drama consumption, not only AI titles, but they illustrate the large distribution funnel feeding AI content.
Video-generation models keep advancing rapidly. Kuaishou's Kling AI, one of China's leading tools, has upgraded from version 1.0 to 3.0 Omni over two years. It surpassed 100 million global users by June and generated more than 650 million yuan in first-quarter revenue in 2026.
No single model dominates the space so far. ByteDance's Seedance, ShengShu Technology's Vidu and MiniMax's Hailuo all support professional production workflows.
CHALLENGES BEHIND BOOM
Rapid growth does not guarantee reliable profits. DataEye uses 50 million views as the widely accepted break-even benchmark. Only 1.3 percent of AI short dramas hit that threshold and turn a profit, while 98.7 percent operate at a loss.
That leaves a tiny handful of breakout hits, while most titles attract little attention. Most production teams struggle to stay solvent and sustain output.
The strain is structural. Thousands of similar shows compete for the same algorithmic slots, splitting audience attention and revenue-share payouts thinner. Even with cheaper AI tools, high-end models, repeated renders, computing power and promotion still carry costs.
Quality remains a bottleneck. Developers are pushing AI from short clips toward long-form series and feature films. A polished two-minute episode, however, does not mean AI can sustain a full-length narrative. Inconsistent facial rendering, shifting backgrounds, unnatural movement and plot gaps easily break viewer immersion.
Sanxingdui: Future Past, billed as China's first AI theatrical feature, grossed only 1.8 million yuan as of Wednesday after its Oct. 23 release. Producer BONA Film Group calls it an experiment, with another AI feature already in production.
Regulators are putting guardrails in place. Rules require explicit consent before using a person's face or voice in AI content, alongside pre-production approval, technical screening, human review and traceable records. In November, the NRTA launched a two-month campaign targeting shoddy, vulgar and formulaic micro and short dramas. ■
