Ayase was 22 when she got her first real job. Fresh out of college, she was hired as a producer at a small Chinese entertainment studio specializing in micro-dramas — the short-form, mobile-first series that had exploded across China's social media platforms. It felt like getting a front-row seat to the future of entertainment.
The timing, as it turned out, was cruel.
When Ayase joined, the studio's production department had 30 to 40 people — writers, directors, camera operators, editors, production assistants, coordinators. A small ecosystem of creative labor, all making short-form content for apps like Douyin and Kuaishou. It was chaotic, fast-paced, and, for a new graduate, exhilarating.
Then the studio discovered AI-generated production tools.
"After the transition to AI, each team was reduced to about 10 people," Ayase told Reuters in February 2026, shortly after being laid off. "And only two people were left for filming with real actors."
The math was brutal but simple. In productions using real actors, "a single actor costs thousands of yuan a day, even for a minor role with only a few lines," she explained. AI-generated characters cost a fraction of that and never need breaks, trailers, or union compliance. The quality gap was narrowing fast — not perfect, but good enough for the algorithm-driven feeds that determine what hundreds of millions of viewers watch.
Ayase was part of the generation that was supposed to ride the micro-drama wave. The industry had been a rare bright spot in China's youth employment crisis, creating thousands of entry-level positions for young people who otherwise faced a grim job market. In 2025, China's micro-drama market exceeded $14 billion, and the sector was expected to drive around $3.5 billion in AI-generated content revenue alone in 2026.
But that growth came with a paradox: the industry that was supposed to employ young creators was being rebuilt to exclude them. The skills Ayase had spent four years developing — coordinating production schedules, managing talent, understanding audience pacing for mobile content — were being compressed into workflows that a handful of AI-literate technicians could handle.
"In productions with real actors, the costs are just too high," she said, repeating the logic her employers had used to justify the shift. She didn't sound angry so much as bewildered — a recent graduate watching the ground beneath her profession rearrange itself before she'd even learned to stand on it.
Her story is part of a wider pattern. Citibank estimated that 9.6 percent of all jobs in China — about 70 million positions — are at high risk of being replaced by AI, with the risk rising to 13.6 percent for entry-level positions. China's "AI Plus" initiative aims for 70 percent AI adoption in key sectors by 2027 and 90 percent by 2030.
For Ayase and millions of young Chinese workers, the promise of the AI economy is a cruel inversion: the tools being celebrated as the future of productivity are the same tools making their skills obsolete before they've had a chance to use them.
State media has tried to reassure workers, publishing articles claiming AI isn't "stealing people's rice bowls" — the Chinese idiom for destroying livelihoods. On RedNote, the hashtag "AI anxiety" has accumulated 7.8 million views, with young users comparing themselves to 19th-century European weavers who lost their jobs to mechanical looms.
Ayase is now looking for work. At 22, with a degree and a laid-off producer's résumé, she's competing for positions that may not exist much longer. "Those who don't use AI will be weeded out," she said, echoing the phrase that has become a grim mantra for China's tech workforce. But the tools she's being told to master are the same ones that eliminated her job.