.png){kind=logo}
Newsletter N°91 - Summer Edition 2026
🎥 Media/AI: AI short dramas create virtual stars
China's booming AI short-drama industry is giving rise to a new type of entertainment talent: virtual actors whose characters can appear across multiple productions, build their own audiences and generate commercial revenue. Rather than creating entirely new faces for every AI-generated drama, producers are increasingly developing recognisable virtual characters that can be reused as recurring stars.
Fang Taozi, the virtual protagonist of the AI short drama The Girl Who Was Laid Off
This is creating an emerging virtual talent ecosystem. A successful AI-generated character is no longer necessarily tied to a single story: once audiences become familiar with a face and its personality, the character can be introduced into other short dramas, social-media content and advertising campaigns. The model increasingly resembles the traditional entertainment industry, where a recognisable actor can sign multiple projects and commercial contracts.
The phenomenon is illustrated by Fang Taozi, the virtual protagonist of the AI short drama The Girl Who Was Laid Off. The character rapidly built an audience on Douyin, reaching more than 410,000 followers, while her male counterpart Zhou Yiheng surpassed 130,000. Fang Taozi has subsequently moved beyond the original drama, securing commercial opportunities including a campaign for a contact-lens brand.
The commercial value of these virtual stars can already rival that of human influencers. According to data cited by CLS, Fang Taozi's advertising rates range from RMB 168,000 to RMB 258,000 per placement (€21,000 to €33,000 per placement), depending on the length of the video. This suggests that once an AI character acquires audience recognition, its value is no longer determined by the cost of generating the character, but by its brand equity and ability to attract viewers.
This creates an important shift in the economics of AI-generated content. Generative AI makes it possible to produce characters at very low marginal cost, but the real value increasingly lies in building a consistent identity around them. A recognisable face can be reused across stories, genres and commercial campaigns without the scheduling, location and production constraints associated with a human actor.
Fang Taozi appears across different AI short dramas, illustrating the emergence of recurring virtual actors in China’s rapidly growing AI drama market.
The phenomenon also changes the way audiences consume AI short dramas. As virtual faces become recurrent, viewers may begin to recognise certain characters in the same way they recognise actors in traditional television. Familiarity itself becomes an asset: audiences can follow a virtual character from one story to another, while producers can leverage an already-established fan base instead of introducing an entirely new cast for every production.
China's scale of AI short-drama production is accelerating this trend. More than 220,000 AI short dramas and AI comic dramas were released during the first half of 2026, creating an enormous number of opportunities to test new characters and identify those capable of attracting an audience.
Yet the emergence of virtual stars also reveals the industry's central paradox. Production is becoming extremely easy, but creating a hit remains difficult. Only around 0.5% of AI short dramas reportedly became major hits, meaning that the ability to generate thousands of characters does not automatically create successful stars. Audience attachment, storytelling and character consistency remain critical differentiators.
The next step could therefore be the emergence of a genuine AI talent market, where virtual actors are represented, licensed and booked across productions much like human performers. This would extend generative AI beyond content production: AI could begin reshaping the very concept of talent, casting and intellectual property in the entertainment industry.