Original · Unique Research · 2026-04-14
Editor's note: The first-person report and its judgments belong to the original Chinese author. This English rendition retains the opening essay and full panel, including all named speaking turns. Revenue, viewership, market and industry figures are source or speaker claims, not independently audited findings. The term "risqué short dramas" (borderline short dramas) retains the source's characterization of borderline-content short dramas. Company, personal and work names are transliterated where official English forms remain unverified. The Guo Degang quotation about "art" and "craft" is translated as figurative rhetoric.
Unique Awards
An AI Director's Truth: When Big Contracts Dry Up, I Can Only Shoot Risqué Short Dramas
Tools have been democratized, but the barrier to making money has instead become higher. AI has not made content creators more idle; in many cases it has simply pushed them into a more brutal efficiency war and a narrower survival gap.
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Everyone is talking about cost reduction and efficiency gains. For the client, costs are reduced—but when everyone does this, it becomes vicious involution, no different from drinking poison to quench thirst.
Some people use AI to go to Hollywood and take custom long-drama contracts, landing big deals worth millions. Others use AI to run images through the night, doing short-drama revenue-sharing on various platforms, only to end up being "exploited for free" by the platforms as cannon fodder.
Clearly everyone is using the same image-generation model, the same video tool. Why do some become the IP of an era, while othersinvoluted themselves into "assembly-line cheap labor" of the AI age?
This was the industrycurrent state described by several top AI creators at a roundtable during "Unique Awards · Hangzhou AI WEEK."
The core of the discussion was quite direct: in the AI age, how exactly does content monetize?
After watching their conversation, my biggest takeaway is this: the mythologized AI wealth code is actually a massive survivorship bias. In this era of technological frenzy, tools have been democratized, but the barrier to making money has instead become higher than ever before.
AI Has Not Made You Idle—It Has Made You More Tired
In countless course-selling promotions, AI is synonymous with "passive income." Tools generate with one click, and you just need to lie on the beach drinking coffee.
But Yanchuan (a well-known AI director) directly tore off this fig leaf at the roundtable.
"Everyone is talking about cost reduction and efficiency gains. For the client, costs are reduced—but when everyone does this, it becomes vicious involution, no different from drinking poison to quench thirst."
Previously, a 1-million-yuan traditional film and television project, completed in one month, still allowed him to "steal half a day of leisure." Now with AI, a 100,000-yuan project has the client asking you to finish it in 10 days.
"The remaining time you have to take on new jobs. In the end, you haven't stopped for 30 days, and the total value is less than what you made from one project before."
In the eyes of this director who has won many AI art film festival awards, AI has not let him live the ideal creative life. "I have now become a person with no life."
A quote from Jensen Huang finds its cruelest confirmation here: AI will not replace your job, but it will definitely make your life more complicated.
Don't Do Short Dramas—You Are Being "Strangled"
If commercial contracts are too competitive, what about doing the "AI short dramas" and "AI comic dramas" that the entire internet is currently praising?
Jichuan (head of Jichuan AI Studio, representative work AI version of Black Myth) directly poured cold water.
More than half a year ago, AI short dramas still had a dividend period. But now, a large number of traditional film and television people have flooded in, and various automated workflows and aggregation platforms are rampant.
"Now, things at the baseline of 50 to 70 points are appearing in mass quantities," Jichuan said. With one-click operation, even a complete novice who knows nothing about audiovisual language can produce a passing video.
But users' total attention is limited. When content supply far exceeds demand, this becomes an extremely brutal buyer's market.
In this disaster area of extreme homogenization where everyone is using the same large model to run videos, without a highly recognizable personal visual style and IP accumulation, the work you throw in won't even make a splash.
"That's why I strongly dislike many marketing accounts hyping how much money AI short dramas can make each month," Jichuan said bluntly. "They have ulterior motives, tricking people into buying courses or workflows."
At this point, if you go into short-drama revenue-sharing, Yanchuan's advice is even more direct: "If you want to do revenue-sharing, be prepared to be exploited for free and used as cannon fodder."
The "Folded Era" of Making a Living and High Art
Faced with such a highly competitive market, how should creators survive?
The answers are extremely polarized.
One is to completely lean toward the "lowbrow."
Yanchuan, who has won countless highbrow art awards, openly admits his current situation: "This year, the reality is, I need to eat."
He not only does highbrow work— to survive, he also does melodramatic short dramas, risqué short dramas, and palace-era female-oriented dramas. "Because I am very clear: never only do things that are too refined to be popular. If only art cannot sell, that is just self-amusement."
The other is to aspire to higher-end "fine grain"—premium long dramas.
JadeWu, who has made AI short films with tens of millions of views and frequently collaborates with mainstream official media, has set his sights this year on long-form series of dozens of episodes.
Short dramas require a hook every minute and a reversal every five seconds, but long dramas need to take care of a complete logical closed loop.
"This is a process from coarse grain to fine grain. Mass-produced, shoddily made content will definitely saturate in the future. Doing premium work for the long term is definitely not wrong."
Go Earn New Money, Don't Compete for Old Money
At the end of the roundtable, when everyone was anxious about existing content monetization, where was the breakthrough point?
The consensus of the three guests was surprisinglyconsistent: go earn new money, don't compete for old money.
What is old money? It is existing TVC advertising, traditional short-video traffic sharing. The rules there arerigid, budgets have been cut in half, and everyone is strangling each other.
Where is the new money?
Jichuan believes that with the development of large models, new forms of pan-entertainment different from traditional film and gaming will definitely emerge. For example, the real-time generated interactive videos that ByteDance and Google are testing (generation time less than viewing time).
Yanchuan islayout the combination of AI interactive short dramas and script murder (jubensha), using AI toachieve real-time immersive interactive rounds.
JadeWu compares the current environment to the eve of the mobile game explosion back then: "This is much like the web game explosion period, when various reskinned games looted the lower-tier market. But after this wave passes, the future growth point will definitely lie in interactive film-games and world models."
AI is not a magic wand; it is just a mirror.
It reflects the sweatshop beneath the mask of cost reduction and efficiency gains, and it also reflects the irreplaceability of creators who truly have aesthetic judgment and forward-looking vision in the quagmire of homogenization.
If you are still trying to use AI to replicate yesterday's hits to make today's money, you may be eliminated at any moment by the next faster model.
The real players are already writing scripts for tomorrow's "new species."
What do you think about current AI content monetization? Is your AI creation earning hard-earned money, or have you already cracked a new model? Feel free to share in the comments.
More Conversation Details
Unique Awards · Hangzhou AI WEEK Trends Roundtable Panel
"Creation and Monetization: The New Order and Business Model of Content Value in the AI Age"
Guests:
Guangnian Huanjing — Founder — JadeWu
Yanchuan Culture Studio — AI Director — Yanchuan
Jichuan AI Studio — Head — Jichuan
Moderator: 43AI — Market & Brand Lead & Yilun AI Founder — Yi Yating
Yi Yating: Today, these three teachers actually all have representative works with very highspread volume online. So my first question is: could each teacher briefly introduce yourself, your representative works, and their view counts and data?
JadeWu: Hello everyone, I am Jade. I actually spent a very long time in the gaming industry. In the AI age, based on AI empowerment and a fortunate coincidence, I entered the field of AIGC creation, and so I have some works. If I must name a representative work, the relatively well-known one might be the first one I collaborated on with Director Jia Zhangke the year before last—Director Jia's AIGC short film. At that time, this film should have had tens of millions of views across the entire internet. Later, I actually had many works, with quite a lot of collaborations with various official media such as People's Daily and CCTV, including AI-related night reading programs, etc. A single one may have hadspread volume of several hundred million. Additionally, there are some high-quality TVCs, including the topic of "comic dramas" that everyone is very concerned about today. Recently, I have indeed made some high-end custom premium comic dramas for overseas platforms, and the view counts are not bad—combined, they have had nearly 100 million-plus views within a week of launch. The others, because many are TVC works and are quite fragmented, I don't know how to calculate the view data, so for now it is still mainly the one with Director Jia, and the rest may be some others.
Yanchuan: Hello everyone, I am Yanchuan. Actually, I fear the self-introduction segment the most, because I have quite a lot of industry experience—I have been a traditional film and television advertising director for more than ten years. I am also an old friend in the AI venture capital circle. Because I have many titles, everyone has given me labels like "well-known domestic AI director," which I think is OK. There are actually quite a lot of representative works, so let me just mention a recent one. Recently, in February, we made an animated film called "Will This New Year Still Be Celebrated?" This was before Sora even came out; we made it entirely by hand. I understand it as the last "solitary piece" of my pure manual era. As soon as it launched, it broke 10 million on one platform that same day. Because of this project, we will later develop it into an AI cross-era animated film. So works, including commercial things, are actually quite a lot that are currently being done or in preparation. I think better results I hope to place in the future.
Jichuan: I am the head of Jichuan AI Studio. I actually also come from the gaming industry, a veteran of more than 20 years in the gaming industry. Previously, I also had seven or eight years of experience as a game producer myself. I started leading my team to research AI and do AI-related creation in 2023. Our representative works are mainly "Black Myth" from the year before last and "Pojun Zhen" from last year. These two may not have as many views as the two teachers before me—an order of magnitude difference—but our reputation within the industry is still quite good. We have now also started making comic dramas. As a newcomer to comic dramas, we have not been doing it long, so the project we are working on now should be visible to everyone in a month or two.
Yi Yating: I remember when I interviewed Teacher Jichuan back then, your use of new AI tools to empower Chinese IP was actually very aspirational and interesting. So my second question starts with Teacher Jichuan: now we often see AI short dramas and AI works on video accounts. As an AI creator or artist, how do you build your own recognition and moat?
Jichuan: I think from several perspectives, this is actually experience transformed from my days making games. The ultimate goal is actually to build your own IP, but the two characters "IP" are actually very empty—it is composed of many things and requires a long time toaccumulated, such as style, worldview, story, character settings, etc. These things must be well organized together, expressed through complete works, possibly through repeated expressions to become a series, and finally it can become your IP. Once your work truly becomes IP, among similar things—especially now, as everyone sees, short dramas and comic dramas are growing at ten todozens of times the previous volume—how do you stand out and gain user attention? Building personal IP is the key.
Yi Yating: Then let me follow up: building IP was already very difficult in the internet age. In the AI age, what is your strategy and thinking behind building personal IP?
Jichuan: This may also be my experience from making games before. First, visually, this is the first hurdle—you must first establish a style different from others. For example, we see many people making short dramas where not only are the themes similar, but the styles are also very similar. It is obvious that the image-generation tools and video-running tools they use are exactly the same. So actually at the image-making stage, you must consciously add your personal style or studio style, even when doing the same theme. This is only the first step; visual recognition is a key. And it is not that the stranger the better—you must be unconventional, but at the same time consider public acceptance, which is very important.
Yi Yating: I am sure Teacher Yanchuan also has a lot of his own discourse organization. This move is brilliant, so let's ask Yanchuan: how do you build your own recognition and moat?
Yanchuan: Everyone is smiling knowingly, right? Actually, everyone is talking about this topic. Why is our title today called "Creation and Monetization"? Monetization is a big topic, including the previous guests talking so much, everyone being "half-hidden behind the pipa"—isn't the goal just monetization? If a commercialsector cannot monetize, what is the point? Everyone is talking about topics like Sora, but how to monetize? Today we represent creators to talk about it. I don't like simply talking about "creation," because creation has an artistic bonus. If we talk about content and monetization, I can speak more vulgarly. We directors are often asked "are you doing creation lately?"—this sounds like it has an artistic bonus, rather than asking "are you making videos lately?" which sounds very tacky. In this age, when outputting content, how this content is accepted by the market and paid for by the market is the core. Regarding the word "art," I very much like what Teacher Guo Degang said: "yi" (art) is your own ability and capability; "shu" (craft) is selling your ability. If you only have craft and cannot sell, it is useless. Only craft without art is making a living, but only art without craft is "fraud." For example, if you say you package art so well but finally sell it for one yuan, isn't that crazy? You either cannot sell it and watch it yourself for self-amusement. In the current market, everyone making content is nothing more than how to monetize. Creators make content in two ways: one is to cater to market demand, the other is to lead market demand. Catering to the market, for example, rebirth series, live-in son-in-law series, or risqué short dramas—because the market has demand. Leading market trends, like the recently popular cultivation and Daoism themes, because a group of people made new attempts, brought out the trend, and slowly it became a cultural IP. I have been in the industry as a director for more than ten years, stepped in pitfalls, been beaten by the market, and can recognize myself fairly clearly. Everyone knows I have won quite a lot of AI art film festival awards, and may wonder how a director with so many art awards does commercialization. But I may be the earliest director in China to make AI risqué short dramas.
Yanchuan: The themes I am currently working on include AI theatrical films, medium and long dramas, and also the risqué short dramas, melodramatic short dramas, palace-era, and female-oriented short dramas I just mentioned. Because I am very clear: never only do things that are too refined and highbrow. The two concepts of highbrow and lowbrow—you have to weigh what role you set for yourself. Returning to the topic of IP, IP is not created out of nothing; it is a slow incubation process. Just like Director Jichuan, with a good story and good setting, slowly cultivate it like raising a child. After the heat is built up, then package it like packaging an artist, and it can become IP. For example, "Will This New Year Still Be Celebrated?" that I made during Chinese New Year was also later slowly made into an IP. Doing IP must be planned and purposeful. IP determines the lifespan of your content. You must cultivate it slowly like raising a child, and you must have foresight.
Yi Yating: Curious to ask one more thing: what is the current proportion of your highbrow versus lowbrow works? Which do you lean toward more?
Yanchuan: Last year there may have been more highbrow, but this year there will be more lowbrow, because the reality is, I need to eat.
JadeWu: Regarding artistic recognition and IP, my view may be divided into two aspects. In traditional creation before, everyone's creation tools, experiences, and methods were different, making it easy to form one's own unique artistic recognition. But in the AI age, to some extent, there is actually not much gap between 70-point and 80-point artistic sense—it is easily replicated. You see a style on Xiaohongshu that is good, take a screenshot, throw it into an AI tool, and you can get the effect. So at this stage, to have recognition, creators may need tosuperimposed other capabilities on top of AI, which is the core of differentiated competition. For example, Teacher Jichuan and I both come from the gaming industry, and when expressing works, gaming-style things are indeed more prominent. This is a strength from our previous background, so we lean in this direction. Speaking of IP, last year the vast majority of creators in the circle had the idea of building IP, wanting to create something they operate themselves. But this year, the reality is that everyone is mainly focused on eating, with many commercial cases in hand, and no time to make their own content and IP—which instead becomes a luxury. On the contrary, those who do not need to rely on this to eat and have artistic persistence are moving more steadily in IP planning. I recently just took a trip to San Francisco and Los Angeles in the US, and learned that some overseas creators relatively prefer to persist in making their own things. If they must take commercial orders, they will quote a price, and whether they do it or not is fine—they do not depend on this for survival, so it is easier to have their own accumulation and IP. In China, the vast majority of creators at this stage first solve the problem of eating. Just as Teacher Yanchuan said, first eat well, and only with spare energy do you have the energy to take out what you want to make and express it. When people ask me what I want to do this year, my answer is that last year I was always moving bricks, and this year I really want to make something of my own.
Yi Yating: Following the topic of eating, next let's ask how to eat well.
Yanchuan: I very much agree with what Jade said. I often deal with platform负责人, and I tell them: don't talk to me about the big picture. If you are sincere, first let the frontline excellent creators get rich.
Yi Yating: You actually say that directly to them?
Yanchuan: Yes, wanting the horse to run while not feeding it grass is a vicious cycle. Including the current mutual involution among many content creators, the reason frankly is self-inflicted—everyone is unwilling to be the one who stands out, being manipulated by all parties, and finally extending this vicious involution to excellent creators.
Yi Yating: Theuser experience of frontline creators is very different from the information we see on the internet. Following the question of how to eat, I have interviewed many AI creators in the past and found that everyone takes different paths. Some take big commercial orders for AI films, some take TVCs, some make AI short dramas. On these several tracks, how do you eat well? How did you choose? Starting with Jade.
JadeWu: Actually, I have done all the dimensions just mentioned—whether high-quality TVCs, festival content with central media, or medium and long dramas and short dramas—as long as the price is right, the vast majority of creators are OK with it. Relatively speaking, in the past TVC may have accounted for a higher proportion, because the unit price is high and case closure is fast, making it a relatively quick income. Like the cooperation with overseas platforms at the beginning of the year was also not bad. This year's goal may be tolayout more in long dramas and films.
Yi Yating: Can you elaborate on long dramas? Where is the opportunity this year?
JadeWu: Involving confidential details, I cannot say too much, but this year there will definitely be platforms or top players making some standard long dramas—not the comic dramas currently on the market, but long-form series of dozens of episodes. Pure AI standard TV dramas do not currently exist on the market. Last year there was a proper TV drama called "Taiping Nian," which used Keling AI technology, but this year there will definitely be pure AI long-drama content coming out.
Yi Yating: One more follow-up question—veteran teachers, if you don't want to answer you can skip. What is the biggest difference in creator素养 between making this kind of long drama and making three-to-five-minute short dramas before?
JadeWu: The biggest difference is definitely narrative. Short dramas are short and fast, thinking in minutes; a long drama episode must take care of a complete logical closed loop, and also balance dozens of episodes before and after. In terms of production difficulty, volume, and team scale, there will be great differences from comic dramas and short films. Short dramas need a strong hook in the first five seconds of the minute's opening, and a reversal in the middle; but TV dramas are not this logic. This is a process from coarse grain to fine grain, requiring the team to make premium work, with higher requirements.
Yi Yating: Now many professional film-level directors have entered the arena. In the script area, how do you match with them? Find traditional talent or make up for it yourself?
JadeWu: Professional directors entering will definitely prepare their own scripts. The AI-based part is more about supplementing or replacing traditional processes in production. For traditional directors, they will still personally deeply关注 the script and directing level. Because we already have traditional proper directors, the rest will definitely have a role called AIGC director to coordinate the entire AI production team.
Yi Yating: Teacher Yanchuan, on the path of commercial monetization, you are also a multi-track player. Which track are you most optimistic or least optimistic about now?
Yanchuan: I actually want to talk about what cannot monetize. For example, the recently popular comic dramas—I agree with Teacher Yan's view that for some time to come, monetization will become increasingly difficult. First, more and more people are entering the industry, many traditional industry people making films, TV dramas, and short dramas have come in, and the creator base has greatly increased. While users' total attention is limited, the content being created is already far greater than everyone's attention demand, becoming a buyer's market. Second, with the emergence of various workflows, aggregation platforms, and Agents launched by manufacturers, things at the baseline of 50 to 70 points appear in mass quantities. These two pointssuperimposed, AI short dramas and comic dramas are clearly in oversupply. In this environment, excellent creators or small and medium-sized companies find it hard to survive. Half a year ago AI水平 was still very poor; now one-click operation can achieve passing or even higher scores. Everyone's attention is limited, so how to stand out is very difficult. That is why I strongly dislike many marketing accounts hyping how much money AI short dramas can make each month—they all have ulterior motives, tricking people into buying courses or workflows.
Yi Yating: You think AI comic dramas are now a存量 market where everyone is competing. Do you think an incremental market will emerge in the future? Where is the variable?
Jichuan: Yes, but the entire market will go through a period of震荡. When存量 reaches a certain level, platforms will have the incentive to do grading, supporting good studios to make content with aesthetic standards. But currently technology is developing too fast, barriers are constantly lowering, and platforms are also confused, unable to make adjustments quickly. This chaotic震荡 period will last at least three months to half a year, and increasing investment during this time should be cautious.
Yi Yating: Final question: in the coming year, which AI track or direction are you most optimistic about?
Jichuan: I think with the development of model technology, new forms of pan-entertainment different from traditional film, gaming, and animation will emerge in the future. For example, real-time generated interactive videos, like what ByteDance, Google, etc. are exploring—generation time less than viewing time. And world models, which when developed to the ultimate may颠覆 the gaming industry. Once technology breaks through, all game development pipelines will be颠覆. Although this will not happen in a day or two, it will definitely be earlier than we expect. We must go earn new money, not old money—old money is definitely very competitive.
Yanchuan: My thinking is close to Teacher Jichuan's. AI should empower traditional industries. Two things I am preparing to do: first, in the short drama track, make AI interactive short dramas, which have technical barriers and can let players unlock betteruser experience and business models. Second, combine with script murder (jubensha), introducing AI's real-time interaction to make the immersive experience better.
JadeWu: Our views are relativelyconsistent. To supplement from a macro perspective, current AI comic dramas are much like the period of the mobile game and web game explosion back then, targeting the lower-tier market with massive product output. But soon free reskinned games will no longer be popular. In the future, film and television will definitely also be premium content that has more hope. I am also more optimistic about interactive film-games—film and television is only watching, while games add interaction and immersion, which is the growth point of the next era. Everyone is waiting for world models to be Ready; as early as within this year or early next year, a new era may arrive.
Yi Yating: Are you currently betting on premium medium and long dramas?
JadeWu: Doing premium work for the long term is definitely not wrong. Mass-produced, shoddily made content will definitely saturate in the future. The definition of premium is, first, the time cost invested and production specifications are different; second, the content has exquisite design that is very attractive, rather than being force-fed to you by algorithms.