Chinese media reports that the Chinese mini drama industry has begun to enter the era of AIization, and many mini drama platforms are promoting the " protagonist real person, supporting characters fully AI" model, and even "full-film AI, no real person," leading to a large number of supporting characters, dragon sets, and contract actors becoming unemployed, even the work of top mini drama actors has been greatly reduced, and film remuneration has been cut back.

According to Sohu China, multiple short drama filming bases in Hengdian and Zhengzhou in China have seen a large number of actors unemployed. In January of 2026, the proportion of AI simulator skits jumped dramatically from 7% last year to 38%, and it is expected to be more than half or even higher.

By comparison, the cost of live action miniseries is between 1.5 million and 3 million RMB, while the overall cost of an AI simulator miniseries has already been reduced to less than 200,000 RMB. Because live action miniseries are hard to compress in terms of cost structure, manpower, venue, equipment and actor pay, while AI miniseries will continue to decline with iteration.

Take Seedance 2.0, for example, its commercial pricing has dropped to about 1 HKD/second, and the single episode cost of AI miniseries can even be reduced to less than 500 HKD. This means that the budget for making a live action miniseries is enough to create three to five AI miniseries of the same level.

Not only has costs decreased, but the emergence of AI technology has also significantly increased the production capacity of Chinese miniseries. It is expected that 150 AI miniseries will be launched in March 2026. Such an expansion speed, live action short dramas cannot be reached at all.