🗞️ QUICK SCROLLS

📈 Is China’s AI price war over? After a period of offering as much as possible to users at relatively low prices, Chinese AI (LLM) companies are now raising their prices. Last week, DeepSeek – known as the cheapest LLM model around – announced a raise in its API prices, showing that LLM models in China, like food delivery platforms, follow a clear strategy of first attracting users and subsidizing growth, then monetizing once users are locked in.

🐸 “Antibiotic bullfrogs” are a new cause for concern. Bullfrogs sold through e-commerce channels, popularly used in various dishes (like bullfrog hotpot), have been found to contain excessive antibiotic residues after being tested by an independent Shanghai investigation team. Antibiotics are widely used in bullfrog farming.

🌾 A 67-year-old farmer from Anhui ruined 25 acres of crops after following a chatbot’s advice on which pesticides to use. The AI tool recommended a strategy including fomesafen, which killed the farmer’s entire sesame plant crop. Chinese state media highlighted the story as a warning to the growing number of senior citizens who are relying on AI a bit too much.

👁️ A Chinese ad campaign for contact lenses has been taken offline because it starred an AI actress who doesn’t actually have eyes. Last week, I reported on the success of this AI actress, Fang Taozi (方桃子), in the AI micro drama “Laid-Off Girl” (被裁掉的女孩). After a Chinese cosmetic contact-lens brand paid a large sum to feature the actress in its commercial, regulators flagged it because the virtual actress claimed…

Over the past few weeks, a noteworthy amount of AI-related news has been trending on Chinese social media, which is reflected in this week’s edition.

Now that AI has entered every corner of media consumption and online life, related discussions seem to be reaching a new peak. While well-produced AI dramas are receiving more praise, low-effort AI slop is flooding video feeds and increasingly being used to stir controversy and generate clicks, fueling prejudice, hate, and cyber-nationalism. More about that further down in this newsletter.

🗞️ QUICK SCROLLS

🎬 A new AI-generated micro-drama has become all the rage on Chinese social media. While earlier AI dramas were criticized for being sloppy and repetitive, Laid-Off Girl (被裁掉的女孩) is praised for its quality and appealing protagonist, Fang Taozi (方桃子), a small-town woman pursuing her dream of becoming a model in Paris. She is so believable that viewers almost forget they are not watching a live-action production. This marks a real step up in quality for the industry, raising the bar for others. (If you want to get a taste of what it looks like, here’s a YouTube link).

Stills from the popular micro AI drama Laid-Off Girl (被裁掉的女孩).

📺 China’s national TV has now also aired its very first AI drama. While AI dramas mostly belonged to the realm of unofficial short-form online productions, the phenomenon has now made the leap to longer productions broadcast on national satellite television. Anhui TV is airing the Ming-dynasty drama The Tale of Peach Blossom Pool (桃花潭记), promoted as China’s first fully AI-produced medium-length drama centered on…