Character.AI has announced c.ai Series, a slate of short-form, episodic "microdramas" designed to be watched and interacted with on a phone, marking the latest step in the company's push to become a broader storytelling platform beyond its LLM-powered chatbots. Unlike rival services such as ReelShort and DramaBox, which offer cheaply produced live-action shows with human performers, c.ai Series are animated and made almost entirely with generative AI, with the twist that viewers can chat with the characters after finishing an episode. The move places Character.AI in a microdrama market projected to be worth $26 billion within a few years.

The launch begins with three projects — Last Summer (an anime-styled tale of secret admirers), The Nighttime Game (friends playing a deadly card game) and Eden Fall (elite gamers entering a virtual reality) — each debuting with ten episodes of under two minutes, with the first eight free and the final two paywalled. CEO Karandeep Anand said the company used Hollywood screenwriters and detailed story "bibles" fed into its proprietary, in-house AI pipeline to maintain visual consistency and avoid "video slop", with development taking a few weeks per series. Each episode is powered by a unique LLM restricted to information already established on screen, and Character.AI plans to eventually let creators make their own microdramas using its tools.