Johnny Chan: AI micro-dramas and the one-more-minute trap

Not many people decide to sit down and watch a 40-minute drama on their phone. Plenty of people will watch 40 one-minute episodes, though, one easy decision at a time. That's the hook behind micro-dramas, the vertical, cliffhanger-loaded soaps turning up in social media feeds, more and more of them made with AI. University of Auckland business lecturer Johnny Chan has been studying why they're so hard to put down. He's never watched one for fun, and after his research, he probably won't. In China, 850 million people do. Johnny walks Perlina through how a typical storyline keeps twisting to hold you, and why he worries about a generation that can't sit with anything longer than two minutes.