On a rugged shore in an unknown realm, a mortal, Li Xingzhou, defies the water god Gong Gong. As Gong Gong stirs from eons of slumber, ominous clouds swirl, and ferocious waves batter the cliffs. The earth shakes, mountains fracture, and a cascade of tidal waves threatens to engulf Li.

This confrontation marks a key scene from “The Mirror of Mountains and Seas: Breaking Waves,” a new five-episode ultrashort drama, with each episode running just three minutes, dominating the domestic charts.

Except, every element — from the script and dialogue to storyboarding, special effects, and even the soundtrack — was crafted not by human hands, but by advanced AI tools.

“Featuring grand battle scenes that required extensive rendering and special effects, AI slashed our production time and costs by more than 75%,” says Chen Kun, a veteran director and producer who helmed the ultrashort drama. “What used to take up to six months, we accomplished in just two.”

The interest was swift. After its premiere on the popular short video app Kuaishou on July 13, “The Mirror of Mountains and Seas: Breaking Waves” amassed over 52 million views, becoming the top drama on the platform.

And with traditional film and dramas steadily losing ground to ultrashorts, as audiences increasingly favor short-form entertainment, AI technologies are stepping in to fill the demand.

In 2023, short drama app users surpassed 500 million, pushing the market size close to 40 billion yuan ($5.58 billion) — nearly 70% of the traditional film market’s size, according to a Kuaishou and Endata report. This figure is expected to exceed 100 billion yuan within five years.

“On Kuaishou, there are 94 million short drama app users watching more than 10 episodes daily. Short drama supply is highly insufficient. We want to increase production capacity by two methods: increasing the number of creators and improving creators’ productivity,” Chen Yiyi, head of Kuaishou’s entertainment business, said at a recent media briefing.

Leading film producers are quickly adopting AI too. Bona Film Group, a top distributor and producer in China, partnered with Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, to co-produce “Sanxingdui: Revelation of the Future.” Premiering on July 8, the 13-episode series depicts an apocalyptic world against the backdrop of Sanxingdui civilization, and has amassed 140 million views so far.

In another recent film, “A Legend,” Jackie Chan, now 70, was dramatically de-aged to look 27 using face-swapping AI technology.

“My instinct tells me that AI will bring disruptive innovations to the film and video industry,” explains 42-year-old Chen, a veteran in the entertainment industry known mainly for directing variety shows such as “The Voice of China” and “The Street Dance of China.” “That’s why I decided to transition towards AI.”

Yet, as AI reshapes the creative landscape, it’s not without its challenges. Critics argue that AI-generated content often lacks the emotional depth and nuanced details of traditional filmmaking, with visuals sometimes appearing cold and mechanical.

Even creators acknowledge that AI still requires significant human intervention to achieve the desired results, particularly in areas like action choreography and character expression.

New frontier

Despite their soaring popularity, ultrashort dramas have typically been confined to well-trodden genres such as domineering CEOs, cheesy time travel narratives, or conflicts within wealthy families.

But according to Chen, AI now offers creators the tools to break free from these clichéd constraints. “Rather than vying for a piece of the same pie, this technology allows us to innovate and attract new audiences,” he explains. “We’re creating an entirely new genre within the medium.”

Several other sources interviewed by Sixth Tone echo his opinion, underscoring that a significant proportion of current AI-produced short dramas focus on mythological stories and futuristic science fiction.

Such AI-driven dramas include grand scenes and complex post-production demands, which typically deter traditional short dramas due to their brief production cycles and constrained budgets. “Hopefully, this innovative content will draw in viewers who haven’t typically engaged with short dramas, benefiting everyone involved,” says Chen.

Guided by this rationale, Chen carefully selects stories for adaptation. “The Mirror of Mountains and Seas” follows a young man’s quest to rescue his kidnapped mother and battle an omnipotent monster for victory. Chen chose this tale for its complex visual demands and deep cultural resonance with local audiences.

Mia Fan, a 30-year-old art director from Shanghai, leveraged AI to create “The Fairy Tale of Yun Tianming,” a short film inspired by the iconic Chinese sci-fi novel “The Three-Body Problem.” The six-minute short garnered 86,000 views on streaming platform Bilibili.

“In the past, creating an animated film was a painstaking, years-long process,” says Fan. “With AI, we can quickly generate visuals, which frees up our team to refine the script and create more stories.”

While Fan taught herself to use AI software, Jia Suruina, a 23-year-old AI visual designer from the central Hunan province, spent about 1,000 yuan each month on software costs. Jia used the technology to digitally present medicinal herbs from the Compendium of Materia Medica, offering a way to restore the lost treasures of this Ming dynasty (1368–1644) text.

“Making short AI films is almost as simple as making videos on your phone,” says Dashu, a popular content creator on Bilibili.

Working full-time, Fan can produce about five minutes of video monthly, which she says is comparable to the output of a full-time creator creating traditional videos. “Good creativity and a solid work ethic can bridge any technical gap,” she underscores.

Meanwhile, China’s tech giants are quickly catching up. Inspired by innovations like OpenAI’s Sora and the startup Pica, ByteDance, Tencent, and Kuaishou are rapidly developing and deploying advanced text-to-video tools.

For example, Chen’s collaboration with Kuaishou on his short drama utilizes their video creation model, Kling, alongside other software.

With Kling and Bytedance-backed Dreamina expanding their influence — hosting multiple AI film competitions to encourage creators — the window for other AI video startups is narrowing.

“With over 1.5 billion combined users, these platforms dominate short video creation across most of China, fundamentally altering the competitive landscape,” an industry expert recently told domestic media.

Beyond the machine

Despite the optimism surrounding AI’s potential, content creators are quick to point out the tool’s limitations, underscoring that the quality of AI-produced short dramas often falls short of expectations. Even those marketed as fully AI-generated still rely heavily on human intervention.

Take Chen’s “The Mirror of Mountains and Seas,” for instance. While it employs advanced text-to-picture and picture-to-video technologies, human oversight is indispensable.

Directors provide specific prompts for a character’s appearance, such as the protagonist’s clothing, age, and style, and although the AI generates hundreds of options, the final selection still rests in human hands.

“Current models are not particularly adept at understanding and portraying action sequences, making it difficult to match traditional films,” Chen admits. During one fight scene, the creative team attempted hundreds of iterations but still couldn’t achieve the desired outcome.

“Even the final version was not entirely satisfactory,” Chen concedes, adding that AI-generated results often fall short of the perfection he seeks.

Audiences, too, have their reservations.

Chen Youjin, a 21-year-old finance major who watched Chen’s drama, criticized the storyline, saying, “It is very clichéd. It feels like it was made just to showcase AI’s special effects technology, with no real plot.”

Others point out that AI-produced dramas also lack the nuance and emotional depth found in traditional films. Zhang An, a 30-year-old art professional from the central Hunan province, says significant improvements are still needed, particularly in areas like light and shadow transitions, character expression handling, and overall attention to detail.

“Everything still appears quite stiff and immature, especially when it comes to rendering human characters,” she observed. “The visuals have a noticeably cold, machine-made feel, lacking a compelling narrative, which makes it difficult for the audience to immerse themselves fully.”

While AI can significantly boost creative efficiency, its inherent randomness poses challenges in achieving consistent visuals and character alignment, according to Dashu.

“Sometimes, to get a satisfactory storyboard image, I have to keep adjusting AI prompts and end up generating hundreds of images,” said the 35-year-old programmer from the southern tech hub of Shenzhen.

Another concern is the potential for homogeneity. “Different creators using similar AI tools might produce works with similar styles, making it easy to copy AI-generated content,” Dashu explains. “This raises potential copyright and ethical issues, such as the creation of identical facial expressions or characters.”

Chen concurs, noting that existing large language models simply convert user queries into prompts, pulling from existing databases to generate content. “This means that new content is often just a recombination of existing material rather than something truly original,” he says.

Zhu Guli, content director of a short drama firm that creates dramas for overseas audiences, says his team uses AI to generate background music for their dramas. But they remain cautious about copyright issues, given that their content targets the global market. “We still rely on human musicians and only use AI-generated music as a reference,” he says.

For Zhu, the authenticity of films and dramas produced by real people outweighs those created by AI, as audiences crave emotional connections with characters.

“The emotional depth comes from the actors’ personal experiences, cultural understanding, and their ability to convey subtle cues through dialogue, expressions, and interactions. These elements resonate more deeply with audiences,” he adds.

Despite the hype around the use of AI face-swapping technology, Jackie Chan’s “A Legend” bombed at the box office, earning only 80 million yuan in revenue. A sequel to “The Myth” and “Kung Fu Yoga,” also directed by Stanley Tong, it failed to attract movie-goers as expected, garnering a disappointing 5.1 rating on Douban, compared to 7.0 for “The Myth.”

Even in an era dominated by advanced technology, the appeal of real action endures — especially with icons like Jackie Chan, whose every punch and kick feels authentic.

While special effects, especially when combined with AI, can create incredibly realistic visuals, they can also detract from the experience when the audience knows it’s artificial. “Seeing a 70-year-old Jackie Chan still performing his difficult stunts adds an irreplaceable value that technology simply can’t replicate,” says Zhu.

Editor: Apurva.

(Header image: Visuals from Imazins/VCG and @极客电影 on Weibo, reedited by Sixth Tone)