Character.ai is entering the small drama scene with its own productions, but there’s a twist

Little drama it is Such anger These days, almost every type of company in the interest economy – whether custom Small drama applicationsOr social media giants (TikTok and Instagram) or streaming services (peacock, Amazon Prime and India JioHotstar) – is building a product to take advantage of an opportunity.

Character.ai, which lets people chat using custom AI avatars, is tapping into this emerging market by producing its own mini-dramas using AI characters. But there’s an interesting twist that takes advantage of the company’s core product: users over the age of 18 can chat with characters from these shows, ask them questions, and even role-play in different stories.

The startup is launching three mini-dramas to start with: a dubbed romantic series.Last summer“Horror show titled”Night gameAnd a little Hunger Games-like drama called…Aden case“.

Character.ai says these dramas were created using AI production tools, and in the long term aim to help users create their own characters and series.

“Starting with a studio-led model, c.ai Series allows our production team to evolve the format, optimize workflows, and understand what audiences want from original character Microdrama entertainment. Over time, the goal is to turn those lessons and workflows into creation tools, enabling users to create their own series from original characters and share them with a global audience,” a company spokesperson told TechCrunch.

This is the latest in a series of recent features from the startup following its shift towards Focused on entertainment Last year’s features. In April, I raised a tool called Lorebook that users can employ to create world-building information that defines characters Can be referenced and launched Another advantage So-called books that allow users to insert themselves into selected classic literary titles, or role-play as characters from them.

The company said Thursday that it is also testing a feature, dubbed c.ai FM, that will let users put together audio series, and another that will let you create fictional stories, called c.ai Reads. The audio series feature is currently available to select users within the c.ai Labs beta program, which the company says professional writers are using to create serialized audio dramas.

There is definitely an audience for this type of entertainment. Users will spend more than 950 minutes on Character.AI each month in the first half of 2026, according to Sensor tower.