From Creators to Correctors: AI, Platform Power, and Animation Work in Small and Medium Studios

The rapid growth of artificial intelligence is significantly transforming the production relationships and power dynamics within China’s creative and cultural industries. Focusing on small and medium-sized animation studios, this study uses participant observation and in-depth interviews to explore how AI technologies, within a platform-based environment, reshape the power balance between studios and platforms. The findings reveal that AI has shifted creative work from “drawing” to a practice mainly focused on correcting AI-generated outputs, effectively turning creators into “correctors.” Although efficiency has gone up, work has become more demanding, and the risk of losing skills has increased. This change results from the technological monopoly platforms built with proprietary AI tools, shifting small and medium-sized teams from traditional “distribution dependence” to a dual reliance on “distribution channels and production tools.” Under this new monopoly, workers’ operational data is used as training material without compensation, leading to implicit exploitation and the erosion of studios’ core knowledge assets, which weakens their unique competitive advantages. In response, small and medium-sized teams develop strategies such as “manual refinement,” creating a continuous bargaining dynamic; however, these efforts are ultimately absorbed by platforms as training data. This study reveals a new type of platform monopoly in the AI era, one that extends beyond market dominance to also control creative practices and data extraction.