AI Vertical Dramas Have a Safety Problem
There are so many reasons to dislike AI vertical dramas. The quality is poor, the characters all look the same, well-known actors' likenesses and voices are being used without consent, and it's almost impossible to empathise with characters who display only the most basic emotions.
For me, though, the biggest issue isn't the visuals. It's the complete lack of restraint in the stories AI appears to be creating.
When AI doesn’t know where the line is
I still follow many of the apps that once produced live-action vertical dramas, so I regularly see adverts for their latest AI-generated content.
The expected issues are there in the marketing, but the actual content is far worse.
This week I saw DramaBox promote what appeared to be an AI-generated clickbait advert showing a woman chained to a wall and held as a sex slave, alongside her nine-year-old daughter, who was also being held hostage and prepared as a "gift" for a leering paedophile. In an attempt to save her child, the woman repeatedly threw herself against a wall as a distraction.
This wasn't hidden behind any kind of warning.
It was shown as a social media advert, freely available for anyone to watch, depicting sexual slavery, paedophilia and self-harm in the space of a few minutes. It appeared on Instagram twice, on separate days.
Today I saw another advert featuring a young woman portrayed as a seductive siren luring an older man into a sexual encounter. Then I saw the title and realised she was his stepdaughter.
In that situation, the young woman is not a seductress.
She is a victim.
She has been groomed by someone in a position of authority. Presenting that dynamic as erotic is, in my opinion, both misogynistic and morally repugnant. I struggle to understand why stories like this are being made at all, let alone promoted through mainstream social media advertising.
AI has no moral compass
Artificial intelligence has no understanding of ethics.
It generates content based on patterns and engagement. It doesn't distinguish between positive and negative reactions. It simply learns what captures attention.
It has no ability to understand that some subjects are morally complex, deeply traumatic or outright illegal. If left unchecked, it may simply identify increasingly extreme trauma as an effective storytelling device because greater suffering often creates bigger emotional reactions.
If that is how the underlying model has been trained, it is unsurprising that storylines could continue escalating.
The more horrific the trauma, the bigger the drama.
That is a deeply troubling direction for storytelling.
The real responsibility lies with humans
As frustrated as I am by these storylines, AI itself cannot be blamed.
It is doing what it has been designed and instructed to do.
The responsibility ultimately lies with the people and companies choosing how to use it.
AI cannot understand where the line is in vertical storytelling, but surely there is still a human being involved somewhere in the process.
Do the people approving these projects genuinely see no issue with this material?
Is there meaningful human intervention at all?
Or has too much of the process become automated, from script generation through to marketing?
I genuinely struggle to understand why a real person would look at some of the disturbing concepts that AI appears capable of generating and decide they are appropriate for production.
My concern is that AI tools may be being given too much freedom from conception through to release, without sufficient human oversight before content reaches the public.
I sincerely hope I'm wrong.
I hope companies haven't become so focused on mass production and profit maximisation that they've weakened the safety checks and editorial oversight that responsible storytelling requires.
The marketing is even more concerning
The content itself is disturbing.
The way it's is marketed may be even more concerning.
Given the mass layoffs across many vertical drama companies, I can't help wondering whether marketing departments have also been significantly reduced.
If AI is now being used to select promotional clips, is it choosing content based purely on engagement and shock value rather than the judgement of someone capable of recognising what is illegal, exploitative or wholly inappropriate?
I'd like to believe nobody would hand that level of responsibility to a machine incapable of understanding right from wrong.
But the increasing evidence of cost-cutting across the industry makes me question whether sufficient safeguards are still in place.
If there is a real person overseeing these adverts, they need to do a far better—and far more responsible—job.
If there isn't, there absolutely should be.
Viewer safety must come first
I object to the increasing use of AI in creative industries on principle.
But if production companies are determined to use it, viewers deserve reassurance that meaningful human oversight exists at every stage of the process.
Entertainment should never come at the expense of basic safeguarding, ethics or common sense.
Right now, from what I am seeing publicly, there are enough examples to raise serious questions about whether those protections are working as intended.
Please do better.
Writer - Diane Aitken
This article is an opinion piece. The views and opinions expressed are solely those of the author and are based on the author's own observations and interpretation of publicly available content.
Publication by Vertical Drama Love does not constitute endorsement of every opinion expressed. Vertical Drama Love remains committed to encouraging thoughtful discussion on issues affecting the vertical drama industry while maintaining editorial independence.
