China's NRTA launches new micro-drama crackdown targeting AI content

Recently, the National Radio and Television Administration (NRTA) launched a new round of special governance targeting the low-quality and homogenized content plaguing short dramas, with a particular focus on AI-generated micro short dramas. Building on the results of previous campaigns against vulgar content and copyright infringement, the new initiative will run for two months, from November 1 through the end of December.

The crackdown targets two main areas: content production and distribution. On the production side, regulators will intensify efforts to remove improper children's content, soft pornography, extreme polarization, money worship, and material that seriously violates family ethics. They will also penalize special-genre content that has not been filed or reviewed as required, and address the unauthorized use of facial images and voices—so-called "face theft" and "voice theft"—to regulate how AI short dramas are created. On the distribution side, the campaign will target vulgar content in episode titles, promotional materials, bullet-screen comments, and traffic-driving clips. It will also stop the practice of repackaging the same series under a different title or protagonist name to rerun it repeatedly, and push platforms to address homogenization in homepage slots and key recommendation lists while increasing diversity in algorithmic recommendations.

An NRTA official stated that through this year's earlier campaigns on vulgar content and piracy, the administration has already taken down 75,000 violating short dramas and dealt with over 1,500 violating accounts, bringing positive changes to the ecosystem. The new round zeroes in on how AI technology has fueled vulgar and homogenized content, and aims to further press platforms and institutions to uphold their main responsibilities. The work is currently underway within the two-month governance window.