AI Short Drama Going Global, Costing Only 2000 Yuan per Episode?

[baoshi.rao]

A Chinese face with yellow skin transforms into a Western CEO with just one click, their expressions and movements perfectly matching without any awkwardness.

While people are debating whether Sora will revolutionize the film industry, "AI face-swapping" has already made a big splash in overseas short dramas: AI saves both money and time, eliminating the need to hire foreign actors and crews for on-site shooting. Instead, domestically copyrighted short dramas are directly AI-translated or face-swapped. Simple translation and subtitling cost only 20 yuan per minute, meaning a 100-minute drama would cost just 2000 yuan.

Driven by such profits, some who previously distributed short dramas have now switched to exporting AI short dramas. As more players enter the field, the ecosystem is becoming increasingly mixed. Some are painstakingly working to improve efficiency with AI, while others are cutting corners, waving the scythe of selling courses. Posts like "Earn a Million Monthly with AI Overseas Short Dramas" flood social platforms, and the get-rich-quick stories of low-cost, high-return ventures carry a familiar scent. Image source: X account 'Baoyu'

The logic is simple: using AI for 'secondary creation' of short dramas and then going global, with the core purpose of reducing costs.

Last October, during a conversation with overseas practitioner Leon, 'Deep Echo' learned that producing a locally original short drama in Europe, America, or Australia costs between $150,000 and $200,000. Not only is it expensive, but the biggest issue is also the 'slowness.' Overseas film crews and talent resources are limited, with a maximum of two dramas per month, while at that time, domestic short drama leader Jiuzhou Culture could release over a dozen per month. In less than half a year, the trend of short dramas expanding overseas has grown increasingly fierce, with production capacity ramping up and costs soaring. Leon revealed that many original short dramas now cost up to $300,000, and actors who gained fame through short dramas are also seeing price hikes, with lead actors charging between $400 and $3,000 per day. "Whether it's better quality or faster production, it all requires solid financial backing."

For many companies looking to expand overseas at low costs, producing locally original short dramas is too uncertain, requiring more time and money with no guaranteed results. However, for those with domestic copyright resources, using overseas markets as a distribution channel makes AI a top choice for reducing costs and improving efficiency.

According to observations, there are currently three application methods for AI short dramas going global:

The first is using AI for translation and adding subtitles, which is also the most common approach.

In general, after domestic short dramas are released on overseas platforms, the most basic requirement is to adjust translations and subtitles to make them understandable for international audiences. If done manually—removing Chinese subtitles, translating, timing, proofreading, and encoding—it requires hiring people and incurring costs. Using AI eliminates these expenses. A company specializing in AI dubbing was consulted, which previously focused on translating long dramas and movies for overseas markets, collaborating with numerous local TV stations and film production companies. With the rise of short dramas, they have also incorporated short drama translation as part of their business. According to their pricing, translating and proofreading subtitles, along with aligning them with the timeline, costs 16-20 RMB per minute, with some minor languages being slightly more expensive.

For a 100-minute short drama, AI translation and subtitle adjustments would cost at most 2,000 RMB, enabling low-cost overseas expansion. Bulk orders could potentially drive the price even lower.

The second option includes AI dubbing and lip-sync adjustments on top of translation and subtitles. Simply translating subtitles can sometimes make overseas audiences feel disconnected. Some short drama companies aiming for precise localization also require AI dubbing, with the characters' lip movements adjusted accordingly. This technique is similar to the viral videos we've seen, like Guo Degang speaking English or Taylor Swift speaking Chinese.

According to the price list provided by the aforementioned dubbing company, while human dubbing delivers exquisite results, it comes with extremely high costs—ranging from 80 to 120 RMB per minute and taking 2 to 3 weeks. In contrast, switching to AI dubbing significantly reduces both cost and production time. The entire process—translation, subtitle proofreading, and AI dubbing—costs only 50 RMB per minute. In other words, for just 5,000 RMB, you can produce an overseas short drama featuring Chinese actors speaking foreign languages with foreign subtitles.

AI dubbing + lip-sync reference example, video source from the aforementioned dubbing company The third method involves directly using AI to swap faces, replacing Chinese faces with Western ones, which appears to be a more localized 'shortcut.'

Currently, the pricing for AI face swapping varies significantly in the market. Some claim it costs only a few dozen yuan per minute, with the total cost for a 100-minute short drama, including face swapping and voice dubbing, staying under 10,000 yuan. Others estimate the cost for an entire series to range between 50,000 to 100,000 yuan.

Youfang Technology is currently engaged in AI face swapping services. Founder Fang Wei mentioned in an interview that the price differences mainly stem from the varying difficulty levels of face swapping and the refinement of the videos. If multiple characters appear simultaneously in a video, the difficulty of face swapping increases, leading to relatively higher costs. Short dramas are inherently a low-cost, high-return product, and the addition of AI acts like a bargaining chip, further reducing the already low production costs. Many entering the industry are drawn to this, hoping to leverage even lower costs to drive larger business opportunities.

However, the application results have not been as smooth as imagined—AI-generated short dramas have merely reduced costs, with few users willing to pay for them. Overseas short drama platforms like ReelShort, a subsidiary of Chinese Online, and TopShort, under Jiashu, initially experimented with translated dramas, but overseas users showed little interest.

Wang Xiaoshu, founder of Jiashu Technology, once told "Deep Echo" that there hasn't been a commercially successful case of AI face-swapping or voice-changing in the industry so far. Whether in North America or Japan, almost all successful companies rely on real actors for production. First, AI face-swapping and dubbing only achieve visual localization, not the localization of the story's core. The differences in national conditions, cultural gaps, and user habits between domestic and overseas markets prove that going global isn't as simple as changing a face or a language.

For example, the once-popular "live-in son-in-law" short dramas in China have largely flopped overseas because Western markets don’t even have the concept of a "live-in son-in-law," making it hard for users to grasp the appeal.

Another example is the "infidelity-themed" content favored by Japanese audiences, which follows a completely different narrative approach compared to China. "In China, infidelity is just a negative trait of a villain to highlight the protagonist’s virtues. In Japan, infidelity is a complete storyline," said Wang Xiaoshu. Secondly, overseas users have not developed a consumption habit for 'dubbed content'. According to the 'TikTok Short Drama Overseas Marketing Strategy,' original short dramas account for 95% of TikTok content types, while translated short dramas make up only 5%.

Fang Wei, founder of Youfang Technology, mentioned in an interview that based on customer feedback, the advertising performance of AI face-swapping short dramas is 'average,' unlike the exaggerated claims online about 'saving hundreds of thousands in production costs and capturing overseas audiences.'

Of course, anything involving AIGC inevitably carries potential risks related to copyright ownership, portrait rights, industry practices, and legal regulations. Image source: "TikTok Short Drama Overseas Marketing Strategy"

Currently, the market for AI short drama overseas expansion is filled with hype-driven approaches and aggressive sales tactics, but there are zero genuine commercial success stories. The primary value of using AI lies in cost reduction. However, for professional practitioners, short dramas target mass consumer markets where "cost" isn't actually the top priority.

In China, producing a 100-minute short drama averages 500,000 RMB in costs, while overseas it's about $300,000. Compared to movies and TV series with budgets in the tens or hundreds of millions, short dramas already have significant cost advantages at the hundreds of thousands level. Now with AI, these costs could potentially drop from hundreds of thousands to tens of thousands, but the quality would likely suffer considerably. The idea that audiences would accept this trade-off doesn't hold up logically. Recently, many investors evaluating AI-related projects, especially large-scale models, have placed significant emphasis on "PMF" (Product Market Fit), which refers to the alignment between a product and its market. This serves as a reminder to the industry that while new technologies are valuable, their true worth must be demonstrated through practical applications and real-world needs.

Whether it's AI-powered face-swapping or AI-generated short films, the current wave of AI innovations in the industry remains in the exploratory phase. The impact of AI on the film and television industry is not as severe as some sensationalized narratives suggest. For professionals, staying informed about new technologies is essential, but there's no need to mythologize AI or underestimate one's own capabilities.