This article examines how AI-powered robots, idols and digital humans are reshaping China’s creative industries. Drawing on ethnographic research and media analysis, it shows how AI-driven entities are deployed across entertainment and social media platforms to engage audiences and redefine performance. These digital figures blur the boundaries between human and machine, destabilizing conventional notions of authenticity, artistry, and authorship. By analyzing how audiences and tech entrepreneurs who work with AI encounter these figures with excitement, unease, and familiarity, the article demonstrates that AI has become both a spectacle and part of the infrastructure in cultural life. It argues that the case of AI in China, shaped by the convergence of state ambition and platform capitalism, provides a critical vantage point for understanding how creativity is being reorganized at the intersection of technology, governance, and affect.
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