In recent days, the first short drama “The Girl Who Was Laid Off” created by a generative artificial intelligence (AI) on the mainland has become a sensation. The virtual AI characters in the drama have even started to film commercial advertisements, signaling that AI virtual actors are accelerating towards commercialization, attracting attention from the industry.
“The Girl Who Was Laid Off” premiered on Douyin and Douyin Selection on June 12. According to a recent report by the “Yangtze Evening News,” the drama tells the story of a small-town girl named Fang Taozi who pursues her dream of becoming a model in a big city. After airing, it quickly gained popularity, with over 250 million views on Douyin.
Recently, the AI virtual female protagonist, Fang Taozi, released her first commercial collaboration video promoting a colored contact lens product.
Third-party data shows that Fang Taozi gained over 250,000 fans in the last 30 days, with the current number of fans around 406,000; the advertising rates for a 20-second video are 168,000 yuan, and for videos longer than one minute, the rate reaches 258,000 yuan, surpassing the rates of many real-life internet celebrities with several million or even tens of millions of fans.
According to the Enterprise Registration Information Inquiry App, Fang Taozi’s affiliated company, Guangzhou My Film and Television Culture Media Co., Ltd., was established in 2019 and is involved in cultural entertainment brokerage services, online cultural operations, and TV drama production.
After the success of “The Girl Who Was Laid Off,” the two virtual characters in the drama continue to update short videos as “actors,” including side stories, daily vlogs, behind-the-scenes footage, and interviews, gradually building their independent intellectual property (IP) and engaging in commercial collaborations.
Some internet celebrity agencies have revealed that there is now a market for “digital image licensing,” where businesses can purchase or license the use of AI virtual characters’ images for short dramas, advertisements, and other commercial promotions, with costs typically lower than hiring real people for filming.
The practice of AI characters promoting products has raised concerns. Some netizens believe that virtual characters do not physically use the products, making it difficult to provide authentic user experiences, thus questioning the credibility of their endorsements. There are also concerns that as the production costs of AI content decrease, it may further squeeze the living space of real actors and internet celebrities. “AI does not get tired and can be exploited at will.”
With the release of the second season of “The Girl Who Was Laid Off,” the reception of the series has begun to show a divergence in public opinion.
According to a report by the “Xiaoxiang Morning News” on August 3, many viewers criticized the character development of the female lead, Fang Taozi. In the first season, she was portrayed as a rational and independent career woman who knew how to protect herself; however, in the second season, she easily took in a distant cousin she had never met and offered 50,000 yuan to clean up after her mistake. Many netizens feel that the storyline “forces a decline in intelligence” and question if there has been a change in the scriptwriter.
In addition to the plot, some viewers believe that the AI-generated traces in the second season of the series are more explicit compared to the first season.
A report by “Everyday People” on August 4 revealed that the director of “The Girl Who Was Laid Off,” Feifei Fei, had a seven-year modeling career and is a 37-year-old film and television creator. She mentioned that the entire creative team consisted of only three people and completed the first work in just a month from scratch.
Some netizens think that from shooting short dramas, managing social media accounts to filming commercial advertisements, AI virtual characters have gradually established a complete business model. However, as AI begins to compete with real actors and internet celebrities for traffic and advertising resources, its commercial credibility, content quality, and impact on relevant industries are also sparking more discussions.