AI Short Films Rack Up 500 Billion Views on Douyin, Chinese Actors Lose Work

China's short-drama industry is undergoing its deepest shift since the genre began. AI-generated films on Douyin, China's answer to TikTok, racked up roughly 500 billion views in the first half of 2026. For thousands of extras and background actors in the town of Hengdian, known as China's Hollywood, that marks the end of their traditional livelihood.

The End of China's Hollywood

Hengdian, a town of more than 200,000 people in Zhejiang province with a sprawling complex of film sets, has for two decades been the production hub for short dramas serving China's streaming market. Thousands of people moved there hoping to land roles as extras or bit-part actors. Now the number of film crews looking for actors is steadily shrinking, and social media recruitment posts that until recently sought actors are today looking for AI editors, developers, designers and screenwriters.

The scale of the shift shows in the numbers. More than 120,000 short dramas went online in the first quarter of 2026, 95 percent of them made with generative tools. Producing a similar volume previously would have required thousands of film crews, actors, costumes and locations. Now a team of just a few people with access to the right AI model is enough.

Extras Turn to Food Delivery

Individual stories illustrate the scale of the upheaval. Liu Yuzhan, 29, who used to land around four roles a month, now works as a food delivery driver on the side because his acting income no longer covers his mortgage payment and support for his parents. Junlin, 24, who plays assassins in low-budget productions, worked just seven days in the whole of June 2026.

As the number of crews looking for actors shrinks, the odds of survival narrow. - Junlin, background actress in Hengdian

The problem isn't limited to a shortage of job offers. Yu Shutian, 31, an actress, discovered an AI-generated character online bearing her face, used without her consent in a production she never appeared in. She was unable to prove any legal violation, because Chinese regulations haven't kept pace with the speed of image-cloning tools.

AI can't be stopped. If you can't beat it, join it. - Yu Shutian, actress moving into directing

Production Costs Fall, Middlemen Profit

Tan Chen, 21, launched a startup in April 2026 producing AI animation for short dramas. He initially charged about 1,000 yuan per minute of footage; today market rates have fallen to 150 yuan per minute, as competition among studios grows faster than demand. At the same time, the number of middlemen and agents selling finished productions to streaming platforms is rising, squeezing creators' margins further.

One of the tools driving the shift is SeeDance 2.0, a video model owned by ByteDance, the parent company of Douyin and TikTok, which can generate realistic scenes while keeping characters consistent across shots. In a separate, widely discussed production called Hoắc Khứ Bệnh, an 80-episode series roughly 23 minutes long was made in just two days for about 3,000 yuan, or less than PLN 2,000, and drew more than 500 million views. The film's creators said the cost of visual effects fell from about 3,000 yuan per second of footage to just 3 yuan, a thousandfold drop.

What This Means for the Industry

Working conditions in traditional production have long been harsh, with extras putting in 18 to 20 hour days for around 10 yuan an hour, or less than PLN 6. That is exactly the cost and pace that AI can now undercut even further, offering production without a crew, a film set, or wages for hundreds of people. For streaming platforms and investors, that means a sharp drop in the cost of entering a market worth nearly $15 billion a year, almost twice the revenue of Chinese cinemas.

For Polish readers, the phenomenon signals how quickly generative video can reshape entire local economies built around a single industry, exactly as happened in Hengdian. Similar video models, including Gemini and competing tools also available in Europe, are driving down the cost of producing video content at a pace that previously applied mainly to text and graphics. The question Chinese actors are raising today about the place of humans in entertainment production will sooner or later reach European advertising, video marketing and TV production markets too.

No Chinese media regulator has so far announced rules limiting the use of AI in drama production or protecting actors' likenesses from unauthorized face cloning. Until such regulations are introduced, cases like Yu Shutian's remain legally unresolved, and the scale of the phenomenon, counted in the hundreds of thousands of productions a year, is growing faster than authorities' capacity to respond.