AI Now Drives Over 90% of Chinese Short-Film Output — But Who's Responsible for What Gets Made?

An opinion essay from Vietnamese outlet Công Luận draws on a striking statistic: in the first eight months of 2026, approximately 430,000 short films were released in China, with over 90% involving AI in at least one production stage. Of those, around 68,000 pieces of content were removed by platforms — a number that sounds large until weighed against the total volume, illustrating how production speed now vastly outpaces content moderation.

The piece argues that AI has effectively turned filmmaking into an assembly line, eliminating the cost barriers — actors, locations, cameras, post-production — that once acted as a natural quality filter. Producers can now test multiple scripts simultaneously, replicate whatever drives engagement, and iterate rapidly on characters, voices, and openings. The author, citing FPT Smart Cloud's Nguyen Bao Trung, notes that familiar emotional formulas (betrayal, revenge, rags-to-riches) are recycled at high speed, optimizing for compulsive viewing rather than meaningful storytelling. The central question the essay raises is not whether AI filmmaking is inherently bad, but who bears responsibility when algorithmic incentives and near-zero production costs systematically reward "being seen" over "being worth seeing."