AI Micro-Dramas Reshape the CP Economy: Virtual Characters Rack Up 5 Billion Views as Monetization and Copyright Risks Collide — BigGo Finance

This summer, an AI micro-drama titled “Yu Ni Shen Qing Qin Ru Yu Sheng” became a phenomenon with nearly 5 billion views across Chinese platforms. The show has aired five seasons, and its core appeal lies not just in its rebirth-and-revenge plot, but in how the production company operates the virtual characters like real-life idols—launching CP accounts, releasing behind-the-scenes content, securing commercial endorsements, and even making charitable donations in the characters’ names. AI micro-dramas are replicating—and even surpassing—the CP economy model of live-action entertainment at a fraction of the marginal cost.

The plot of “Yu Ni Shen Qing Qin Ru Yu Sheng” is not complicated. The female lead Rong Jiqiao, in her previous life, rescued the amnesiac scion Duan Yan after he fell on hard times, but her vanity led her to squander his hard-earned money, ultimately ending in her murder. After rebirth, she attempts to reverse her fate. What truly propelled the show to viral status was the operational strategy of its producer, Buming Culture. The company opened three character accounts and one CP account for the leads, “@Duan Yan and Rong Jiqiao,” which has amassed 530,000 followers. The accounts post daily AI actor behind-the-scenes content, Douyin-style hand-gesture dance videos, sweet interactions, and even made donations to flood-stricken areas in Guangxi in the characters’ names. Whatever real celebrities do for promotion, these virtual characters can do—and often more.

When Buming Culture noticed early on that the show had high bookmark rates but low traffic on Douyin clips, it proactively encouraged fans to create derivative works, successfully expanding the story’s reach. Fans produced fake on-set photos and blessing ceremonies for Duan Yan and Rong Jiqiao. The two characters subsequently “re-paired” for new shows “After the Breakup: Male-Frequency vs. Female-Frequency Chaos” and “Yu Ni Na Nian Dong Zhi.”

Another AI micro-drama drawing attention, “Yan Bian Qing Mei,” was independently produced by a single creator named Wanwan and even aired on Anhui TV. The show draws inspiration from the story behind Yan Zhenqing’s “Draft of a Eulogy for My Nephew,” featuring Yan Jiming, the nephew of the famed Tang Dynasty calligrapher, and the time-traveling female lead Li Youwei. The male lead’s historically fated death in service of his country lends the story a tragic undertone, while his post-death time travel to the modern era extends the emotional arc. The two leads even gave a joint interview to Sina Entertainment, breaking the fourth wall between fiction and reality.

The Business Logic of Character Assetization

AI micro-drama producers are charting a path toward turning characters into assets and building fan loyalty through CP operations. When a single breakout hit cannot generate massive streaming revenue, series expansion and character IP management become a more stable business model. Buming Culture leveraged the popularity of “Yu Ni” to feature male and female leads from its other series together on screen for cross-promotional “bundling.”

This model is already showing early commercial results. “Duan Yan” was officially named Tmall’s “AI Companion” for Qixi Festival, starring in brand advertisements—virtual AI characters are now receiving the kind of commercial treatment once reserved for real idols. Fang Taozi, the female lead of “The Girl Who Was Laid Off,” and her male counterpart Zhou Yiheng operate a CP account called “Tao Bu Diao Heng” featuring lifestyle content. Fang Taozi’s personal account on Ocean Engine now commands a rate of 258,000 yuan (approximately $38,000) for videos over 60 seconds.

For CP fans, AI CPs offer one core selling point: they can’t have scandals. Real actors who gain fame through CP pairings often face the problem of “unpairing,” with conflicting interests that are hard to reconcile. But in AI dramas, the CP is entirely controlled by the producer—re-pairing depends on nothing more than a word from the boss. Beyond Duan Yan and Rong Jiqiao, Tang Shi and Song Ci from “Zhu Sha Wen” have also been re-paired.

Copyright Disputes and Accountability Vacuum

However, the AI micro-drama business model rests on shaky foundations. The infringement controversies surrounding “Yu Ni Shen Qing Qin Ru Yu Sheng” have accompanied its rise to fame almost from the start. “Duan Yan” and “Ji Chuan” are accused of appropriating the facial bone structure of “Qin Che,” a character from the game “Love and Deepspace,” while the character voices allegedly blend the voices of well-known voice actors.

Voice actor Wu Lei publicly demanded accountability on August 11, claiming that multiple works—including all five seasons of “Yu Ni Shen Qing Qin Ru Yu Sheng” and Duan Yan’s Tmall Qixi advertisement—used his voice without authorization, and he has filed lawsuits against the infringing companies. AI voice cloning technology can replicate a voice within hours, while voice actors seeking to protect their rights must endure a lengthy process of evidence preservation, retaining lawyers, and filing lawsuits—at costs far exceeding those borne by infringers. This asymmetry makes infringement cheap and rights protection expensive.

Ironically, “Yu Ni”—which allegedly profits from infringing others’ copyrights—has itself become a victim of infringement. The so-called “Duan Yan same-style” pink four-leaf clover bracelet that sold briskly on Douyin before Qixi was, according to an investigation by Beijing Daily, promoted with AI-generated images by merchants, not actual scenes from the show, and without authorization from the producer.

A deeper concern lies in the absence of accountable parties. AI digital humans do not qualify as “advertising endorsers” under China’s Advertising Law—endorsers are limited to natural persons, legal entities, or other organizations. AI lacks civil capacity and cannot independently sign contracts or bear liability. In the case of Fang Taozi’s colored contact lens advertisement, the virtual character made promises about product experiences that it could not possibly have. Should a large-scale consumer dispute erupt, the responsible parties could span training data providers, model developers, content producers, platform distributors, and brands—making accountability extremely difficult to pin down.

The Fundamental Shift in CP Economics

From live-action micro-dramas to AI micro-dramas, the core logic of CP operations is undergoing a subtle transformation. Fans of real-person CPs believe “the CP I ship is real”—those ambiguous moments and veiled affections are the source of emotional attachment. AI CPs, by contrast, have no physical existence; the emotional tension is “industrial-grade sugar” that all parties knowingly accept. The operational logic more closely resembles the visualization of novels or two-dimensional characters—maintaining the credibility of the world and the characters is the foundation for getting fans invested.

Some viewers hope to maintain the boundary between dimensions, arguing that characters should not exist outside their stories. In the comment sections of fan-made “on-set” videos of Duan Yan and Rong Jiqiao, negative voices are not uncommon. But regardless, with “two AI actors are more popular than up-and-coming entertainment industry artists” trending to the top of Weibo’s hot search, AI CPs have precisely captured their target audience.

In the heyday of live-action micro-dramas, high-traffic CPs routinely re-paired two or three times. Zhu Yiwei and Bai Xinyi’s “Zhu Bai CP” even set a record with 38 pairings and became a real-life married couple. But micro-drama actors are ultimately not company assets. In the AI micro-drama era, as technology costs continue to fall, producers have the ability to capture both content revenue and AI artist management revenue entirely for themselves. This is precisely the fundamental motivation driving companies like Buming Culture to aggressively operate AI character accounts.