Quiet on Set: How Artificial Intelligence Revolutionized China's Microdrama Industry

On the set of a microdrama production in the film hub Hengdian in China's Zhejiang province in June, everything initially appeared to be business as usual. Cameramen raced around setting up lights while choreographers ran through fight sequences and prop teams prepared for upcoming scenes. Actors dressed as assassins and hitmen milled about, smoking cigarettes and getting touch-ups from hair stylists and make-up artists.

However, behind this familiar bustle lies a profound new reality. While microdrama production was flourishing in Hengdian and other hubs just a few months ago, these sets are now falling quiet. Seemingly overnight, new AI-video generation tools have taken over the microdrama industry, producing popular vertical shows at a fraction of the cost, decimating live-action productions, and flooding platforms with AI-made content. According to Chinese state media, more than 120,000 microdramas were released in the first three months of this year, with 95 percent of them generated by artificial intelligence.

This shift has made the industry a vivid example of how China's rapid technological transformation impacts livelihoods, wiping out traditional jobs and creating new uncertainties. For actors like 24-year-old Junlin, who spoke between takes using her stage name, a bitter winter has arrived for live productions. Working only seven days in June compared to filming 25 days a month earlier in the spring, she expressed the constant anxiety shared by many young creatives facing a squeezed survival space.

Hengdian, a town in eastern China's Zhejiang province, had been booming with the microdrama phenomenon. Emerging during the pandemic and capitalizing on short video apps like Douyin and Kuaishou, these 90-second episodes combined into feature-length storylines featuring soapy plots about wicked mothers-in-law, mistaken identities, wartime heroics, and wronged lovers. The domestic market reached nearly $15 billion last year, driven by high youth unemployment and an influx of ambitious young actors like 27-year-old Bi Zhiqiang.

Yet the industry was a hyper-competitive pressure cooker demanding 18-to-20-hour workdays to crank out content in hopes of going viral. As competition intensified and companies sought to cut costs, advanced AI tools emerged. ByteDance's SeeDance 2.0 swamped social media with realistic AI-generated videos, aided by the company's repository of novels and platforms like Douyin and Hongguo. Rival technologies from Kuaishou, Alibaba, and MiniMax quickly followed.

Using these next-gen tools, a 120-minute project can be produced by a five-member team in a week for roughly $2,200—less than a tenth of live production costs. In the first half of the year on Douyin alone, 220,000 new AI-generated microdramas accumulated 500 billion views. This economic pressure forced actors like Zhuang Wenjie, Liu Yuzhan, and others to leave Hengdian or take on side jobs like food delivery to make ends meet.

As traditional acting jobs decline, a new ecosystem has emerged for AI editors, programmers, and screenwriters. College student Tan Chen founded an AI startup in Jinan to optimize scripts and generate storyboards using prompts. While this new sector has also experienced falling profits and market bubbles, others like actor Yu Shutian have sought to embrace the technology by transitioning into directing. While the long-term role of human actors alongside AI remains uncertain, creators continue to debate whether artificial intelligence can truly replicate the depth of human emotion.