Character.AI has opened the doors to the microdrama market with three original productions bearing its signature: Last Summera romantic story, The Nighttime Gamea horror film, and Eden Falla survival game inspired by The Hunger Games. The peculiarity lies in the possibility, reserved for users aged 18 and over, to open a direct chat with the protagonists of the series immediately after viewing.
The sector is already crowded. Apps dedicated to short vertical content, social media giants such as TikTok and Instagram and streaming platforms such as Peacock, Amazon Prime and the Indian JioHotstar have long been competing for users’ attention on this format. Character.AI comes with a competitive advantage that comes from its core product: the customizable conversational avatars.
Those who watch the series, explains the company, will be able to question the characters about the plot, ask for insights and even start discussion sessions roleplay to explore alternative narrative developments to those shown in the episodes. The three productions were created using production tools based on artificial intelligence.
Character.AI enters the microdrama industry
The project, called internally c.ai Seriesstarts with a centrally driven model. A company spokesperson told TechCrunch that the in-house production team will develop the format and refine the workflow to understand what audiences are looking for in entertainment built around Characters. The declared goal, over time, is to transform what has been learned into tools for creators, so as to allow users to create their own series starting from original characters and share them with a global audience.
The launch of microdramas is part of a sequence of entertainment-oriented features launched by Character.AI throughout 2025. In April 2026, the company unveiled Lorebooka world-building information tool that characters can draw on during conversations, and had launched Booksa feature that allows users to insert themselves into works of classic literature or play the characters that populate them.
On Thursday, the company said it was also testing two other features. The first, c.ai FMwill allow you to compose audio series and is already available to a small group of users as part of the experimental program c.ai Labswhere the company says some professional writers use it to build serial audio dramas. The second, c.ai Readsis designed for writing fiction.
The terrain on which the company is betting does not lack an audience. According to data from Sensor Tower mentioned from the source, in the first half of 2026 users spent on average more than 950 minutes per month on Character.AI, a dwell time that explains why the platform aims to retain users even beyond the simple chat with avatars.
