AI Comic Shorts Drop to a Few Dollars a Minute as Output Soars

AI-generated comic shorts in China have seen production prices collapse from 5,000 yuan per minute at the start of the year to roughly 200 yuan, with some episodes now costing only a few dozen yuan, according to creators interviewed by a Chinese tech outlet. One blogger complained about losing a minute-long order worth just over 100 yuan, a sign of how thin margins have become.

The format, built from illustrated frames animated and voiced by AI, has drawn crowds of small studios because a single episode can be made in minutes. Output has swelled to as many as 600 episodes a day across the sector, and creators describe the business as betting on probability: most titles fail, and a rare hit must pay for the rest.

Price competition is the immediate cause. As more teams enter, each undercuts the last, and buyers now shop on cost rather than quality. The squeeze mirrors earlier waves in AI video and short drama, where tooling made production cheap but distribution and audience attention stayed scarce and expensive.

For now the arithmetic favors platforms and tools over producers. Whether AI comic shorts mature into a stable format or remain a low-cost gamble depends on whether any studio can build an audience that keeps paying.