China's Short-Drama App Hongguo Adds a Chatbot to Find Your Next Binge

Hongguo, the free short-drama app owned by ByteDance, has rolled out a built-in AI assistant called “Xiaoguo AI,” according to Chinese tech outlet Duojia. The entry point sits in the search bar, and users can also summon it by typing @Xiaoguo AI in the comments, where it answers questions and points viewers toward shows. The app has also begun listing AI-generated dramas that users can follow and auto-bookmark.

Hongguo runs on a free-to-watch, ad-revenue-sharing model and has become one of China’s most-used video apps. Its daily active users reached 168 million as of July 2026, more than doubling year on year — a figure reported to exceed the combined daily audience of Tencent Video, iQIYI, Youku and Mango TV. That scale makes the app a natural testing ground for conversational discovery, since short dramas live or die on whether viewers click the next episode.

The launch fits a wider pattern on Chinese platforms, where chatbots are being folded into search and comment sections rather than kept in a separate tab. For Hongguo, the bet is that asking for a recommendation feels easier than scrolling a crowded feed.

Whether a chat layer can meaningfully lift viewing time on a platform built for quick, passive swiping remains an open question, but the experiment shows how fast AI assistants are becoming standard furniture inside Chinese consumer apps.