China Enacts First Micro-Drama Rules as Top Court Issues AI Dispute Guidelines

The Measures for the Administration of Micro-Drama Development have formally taken effect, the first regulation in China dedicated to governing the micro-drama industry. The new rules close regulatory gaps concerning non-standard AI labelling, content plagiarism by superficial alteration, infringement through rewriting online fiction, and the misuse of faces and voices, and they align with the latest judicial guidelines. On short-video and micro-drama platforms, most AI-generated micro-dramas now carry the required AI-generated label, but some works still do not disclose their AI-created nature.

Content homogenisation and plagiarism are long-standing problems in the micro-drama industry. Many works appear to differ in subject matter, character design, and setting, yet their core plotlines and key narrative structures are highly similar, with only character names, dialogue, and visual scenes changed before release. Data show that in 2025, 70% of Chinese micro-drama works were adapted from online fiction. Some creators directly scrape popular online fiction, feed it to AI large models without authorisation, and generate episodes through bulk rewriting.

The misuse of AI technology has also given rise to infringements of personality rights. The facial images of some virtual characters in AI micro-dramas blend the facial features of multiple celebrities, while dubbing is generated by splicing and synthesising others' voices, so public figures' likenesses and voices are commercially exploited without permission. Because technological synthesis is covert, rights holders face greater difficulty in defending their rights. In judicial practice, identifiability is the core precondition for finding infringement, meaning that viewers can clearly match a synthesised face or voice to a specific public figure, and that it is used for commercial purposes without that person's permission.

On 7 September 2026, the Supreme People's Court issued guidelines on the adjudication of AI-related disputes, setting out detailed handling rules for generative AI content infringement and personality-rights violations. The guidelines establish a personality-rights infringement injunction system: where a rights holder has evidence that another party is using AI technology to commit, or is about to commit, an infringement of personality rights, it may apply to a court for an injunction ordering the infringer to stop the conduct or requiring the AI service platform to terminate the relevant service. Protection of rights thus shifts from after-the-fact accountability to advance prevention.

After the Measures took effect, the industry's regulatory model changed, and platforms' primary responsibility was further tightened. The new rules establish a three-tier classified regulatory mechanism, requiring platforms that discover infringement problems not to ignore them but to take proactive measures such as removing works and disclosing creator information, so as to prevent the harm from continuing to expand. Under the rules long applied in the industry, platforms merely provided distribution channels, and creators were mostly held responsible when content problems arose.

On the data side, as of December 2025, average daily per-user time spent on micro-dramas in China reached 129 minutes, overtaking long-form video. In 2025, the scale of China's micro-drama market exceeded RMB 100 billion. The range of genres for live-action micro-dramas has now expanded to 65 categories, with realist and innovative original subject matter continuing to increase.