AI short drama costs cut by 90%, but who is taking the money?

It's like dropping the price of a bowl of beef noodles from 30 yuan to 3 yuan, only to realize the noodle shop hasn't even opened yet, and the landlord has already tripled the rent. Lower costs don't mean profits end up in your pocket.

The short drama base in Zhuozhou, Hebei went from having 25 film and TV companies clustered there to just 1 remaining. Actor daily rates dropped from 3,000 yuan to 200 yuan. AI generates scripts, storyboards, and face-swaps, cutting production costs by 90%, but the entire sector is actually worse off. Where did the money go? I looked through industry data and here are my judgments.

What AI reduces is "production" cost, not "circulation" cost

The true cost structure of AI short dramas is completely different from traditional ones.

In traditional short dramas, the bulk of the money goes to: actor salaries (30%-40%), filming/production (30%), and traffic acquisition (20%-30%). AI short dramas have driven the first two items to rock bottom—no screenwriters needed for scripts, text-to-image for storyboards, AI for face-swaps, and digital humans for actors. But traffic acquisition? Not a penny less, maybe even more expensive.

Core contradiction: AI makes content cheap, but the cost of acquiring users has actually increased. Because supply has exploded, the number of short dramas on platforms has multiplied, diluting exposure opportunities for each video. To grab user attention, you have to spend more on ad placement. Result: The money saved on production is all poured into the bottomless pit of buying traffic.

[!note]

According to industry insiders, the ROI (Return on Investment) for AI short dramas has dropped from 1:3 in 2023 to 1:0.8 in 2026. Spend 10,000 yuan on ads, get back 8,000—it's losing money just for the sake of noise.

Platforms are the real vacuum cleaners

Where exactly is the money flowing? Three directions:

• Traffic Platforms: Douyin (TikTok China), Kuaishou, WeChat Channels. They make money from ad bidding and revenue sharing. The more competitive AI short dramas become, the more they skim off the top. Production costs drop, but the platform's commission rate remains unchanged (usually 50%-70%). In fact, due to homogenized content and lower click-through rates, platforms raise ad thresholds, effectively increasing prices.
• Ad Placement Agencies: Middlemen earning margins. Professional ad teams can drive the cost per user click up to several yuan, while the value of a single episode click for an AI short drama might be only a few cents.
• AI Tool Suppliers: Selling API interfaces, computing power, SaaS platforms. Using AI for image generation, face-swapping, voiceovers—these tools charge per call. Producers seem to save on labor, but tool fees become a new rigid expense.

In 2023, the money was in the hands of actors and crews; in 2026, the money is in the hands of platforms and tool vendors. Actors' daily rates fell from 3,000 to 200, crews shrank from dozens of people to one or two, but Douyin's ad revenue didn't drop, and AI companies' subscription fees actually rose.

The "disappearance" of actors isn't AI's fault; it's the change in business logic

Actor Xiao Yang said his rate dropped from 3,000 to 200. Many comments blame AI for stealing jobs. But I want to say AI just accelerated elimination; the root cause is that the product attribute of short dramas itself has changed.

Traditional short dramas relied on "thrills" and "acting skills" to attract payments. Users were willing to pay for a specific actor's performance. AI short dramas today are mostly "AI face-swap + celebrity faces" or "digital humans + embedded ads." Users swipe away after 5 seconds; they don't care who the actor is. When content becomes pure traffic goods, actors become interchangeable parts.

You can understand AI short dramas as pre-made meals—low cost, fast serving, standardized taste, but nobody wants to pay a high price for pre-made food. So restaurants (platforms) desperately compress costs, chefs (actors) are replaced by machines, but restaurant rent and delivery platform commissions haven't decreased a cent, making profits thinner instead.

Trend Prediction: AI short dramas will become "ad creatives" rather than an "independent track"

Based on the above analysis, my judgment is...

Original link: https://www.tmtpost.com/8085955.html