Microdramas: Writers’ AI Canary in the Coal Mine

Talk to TV writers on the record and they’ll likely spit on the idea of using artificial intelligence in the writing process. Even before anyone was using ChatGPT and Claude on the reg, AI as an abstraction — a Hollywood killer — was the headlining Big Bad of the 2023 Writers Guild of America strike.  

Now, things are a little more complicated. The AI slop inescapably seeping into your social media feeds is easy to decry. But showrunners increasingly are using AI tools on the DL, studios are hiring chief AI officers and Ben Affleck just sold his AI startup to Netflix. As I’ve written about for a while now — and as Erik Barmack covers robustly in Reel AI — this technology is steadily being integrated into the entertainment business even as it makes creatives uneasy about the future of the industry. 

Just look at the unfolding debacle around Amazon MGM Studios’ recently announced plans to greenlight three AI-fueled animated TV series. Last Wednesday, the studio and its cloud-computing sister company, AWS, unveiled the GenAI Creators Fund, a “joint initiative that gives creators of all styles and backgrounds access to professional-grade AI tools and funding.” The announcement was made at AI on the Lot, a conference about AI futurism in entertainment, where Amazon’s head of AI studios (and its former co-head of TV), Albert Cheng, said AI tools could be used to “bring production back” to Los Angeles. The company trotted out acclaimed Book of Life writer-director Jorge Gutierrez as one of its inaugural partners who would create a new animated TV show, Punky Duck, using AI; he hyped up the initiative’s “rebellious punk rock” possibilities. 

Just two days later, following social media backlash, Gutierrez dropped out. “My intent was to showcase artists, both new and seasoned, both inside and outside the studios, driving this new tech,” he wrote on X. “My sincerest apology to those I upset. I promise to do better moving forward.” 

The Amazon blowback shows how toxic AI remains in traditional Hollywood. Microdramas show what happens in a corner of the business moving fast enough — and cheaply enough — to try it anyway.

Therein lies the central tension that Hollywood is facing right now. Microdramas are not just another AI experiment. They’re a preview of the bargain writers may soon be asked to make. AI advancements won’t yet replace them, but it is already good enough to change the terms of their work. In microdramas — fast, cheap, nonunion-ish and built for volume — that future is arriving first.

I encountered this firsthand when I moderated a panel at AI on the Lot last Thursday — “AI Loops Behind Vertical Microdramas” — the day after Gutierrez’s announced series. The onstage conversation included a group of microdrama specialists who employ AI tools to create entire series, from page to screen, in just weeks.

Why should Hollywood proper pay attention? Follow the money. Microdramas are a rapidly emerging market — stories told in minute-long chapters that you watch (and often pay for) on your phone, designed to be viewed vertically, binge-style, on one of the many apps out there, like ReelShort, MyDrama or DramaBox. Veteran Hollywood executives including former Warner Bros. TV head Susan Rovner, ex-Showtime co-pres Jana Winograde and such major players as Disney, Netflix and NBCUniversal have taken an interest in the multibillion-dollar business. And the companies that win in the format, already hugely popular in Asia and other regions and quickly making inroads in the U.S., are poised to score huge audiences and revenue to match.

On my panel, Celestine Pictures founder Grace Gao, Meta AI product leader and former COL Media CTO Enoch Chen, Plot Party founder Sophia Xing and Bogdan Nesvit, co-CEO and co-founder of Holywater (an AI-first entertainment company that has been backed by Fox Entertainment and Brent Montgomery’s Wheelhouse, among others) walked me through how they’re using AI to accelerate development and production and reduce costs on the already lean-and-speedy microdrama process. 

Here’s what you’ll learn from the provocative conversation, which drew a standing-room-only crowd at AI on the Lot:

• Why microdramas are becoming Hollywood’s first real AI writing lab
• What kinds of writers are actually succeeding in the format
• How AI can give scribes more creative control while shrinking the traditional pipeline
• The writers’ assistant warning sign: why one founder says her company “would be dead” if it had to hire them
• How AI can open up new themes and genres
• Studios’ dilemma: how to exploit AI’s efficiencies without alienating talent
• Why AI still can’t create original microdrama scripts, even when it’s “trained on understanding the recipe”