Recent reports indicate that in the first eight months of this year, as many as 430,000 micro-dramas were released online, a total that is already 13 times the full-year figure for last year, with AI-generated series accounting for more than 90% of that output.
As AI-produced series rapidly capture the short-drama sector, the National Radio and Television Administration recently sent a major signal: it will push forward with the "Premium Micro-Drama Creation and Distribution Initiative," with major platforms opening dedicated sections for live-action dramas and committing real financial resources to specifically support live-action short-drama production.
The current wave of artificial intelligence has dramatically reduced the cost of producing AI short dramas, lowering the creative threshold again and again, so that ordinary people can pick up digital tools and tell their own stories. Short dramas have entered an era of "second-level production and massive supply."
But the technology dividend is also a double-edged sword. Assembly-line AI short dramas repeatedly copy formulaic plots, their virtual faces are uniformly indistinguishable, character expressions are stiff, and emotional expression is hollow, making it difficult to create vivid roles with warmth and individuality. More noteworthy is that while massive amounts of content flood online, shoddily made and sensationalist, disconnected works keep emerging, and some content even deviates in its value orientation. An even more prominent problem is infringement: unauthorized scraping of likenesses and voices, and the wholesale misuse of ordinary people's facial material, have brought copyright protection and personal privacy protection face to face with severe challenges.
The Administration's proposal to support live-action short dramas this time is a timely correction for the industry. Live-action short dramas possess a core competitiveness that AI cannot replicate: actors' genuine emotional performances, the lived-in texture of real-location shooting, and delicate, three-dimensional portrayals of human nature, which give stories warmth and detail and are better able to carry realistic expression and tell vivid Chinese stories well.
Reports note that policy support for live-action short dramas is by no means a denial of the value of AI technology, but rather a clarification of the correct boundaries for industry development, guiding the sector to hold the bottom line of creation. It should not worship speed or output alone and fall into the trap of "emphasizing quantity over quality,"透支 the short-drama industry's reputation; nor should it cling to tradition and reject innovation, missing the opportunity for digital technology to empower industrial upgrading. Policy backing does not mean live-action short dramas can rest easy.
At present, the entire micro-drama industry has long bid farewell to the wild-growth traffic dividend period and entered a new stage of peak traffic, upgrading audience aesthetics, and white-hot competition in the existing market. Viewers no longer pay for mindless thrill and fast-food plots; content competition has shifted from output to texture, sincerity, and value. Only those premium live-action short dramas that have been repeatedly polished and radiate humanistic sincerity are becoming increasingly scarce and precious.
AI empowers quality and efficiency improvement, while live-action creation safeguards the humanistic foundation. Only when the two complement each other can micro-dramas break out of the traffic fast-food trap and achieve an upgrade from "volume" to "quality."