What Is Left for Human-Made Short Dramas Against AI-Generated Ones?
AI-generated shorts pushed Hongguo into its "big Hongguo era." What human studios still hold is accumulation and staying power — defending premium production even as AI premiumization accelerates.
Hongguo's surge has entered a new phase: daily active users exceeding four long-video platforms combined, audiences watching until dawn, the "watch-to-earn" feature taken offline, rumors of annualized revenue approaching 40 billion yuan, and a number-one ranking even in the Taiwan region of China. The biggest driver behind it is the flood of AI-generated short dramas. The piece asks what remains for human-made productions and offers two answers. First, accumulation and staying power: studios with libraries, talent relationships and production craft amortize costs in ways one-off AI generation cannot. Second, holding the high end — even as AI's own premiumization accelerates, human productions should defend quality rather than compete on volume. The subtext is blunt: AI has already won the volume game, so the remaining moat is craft, IP depth, and making work that people seek out instead of scroll past.
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