On 2 October 2026, Singapore's state agency IMDA launched a programme together with TikTok in which twenty accredited media companies spend six to nine months training to produce microdramas. The goal is a series of fifty to a hundred episodes, each one to three minutes long. TikTok has its Southeast Asian headquarters in Singapore.
What is taught there
The programme runs under IMDA's Digital Content and Capability Development. TikTok and its partners teach vertical production, shot composition, storytelling through cliffhangers and the responsible use of AI.
There are two tracks. The live-action track works with actors, and the resulting footage can be supplemented with AI. The AI-animated track guides companies towards anime and comic-book stylisation using Seedance 2.5, a video model from ByteDance, TikTok's parent company. It covers prompt engineering, character consistency across episodes and quality control of effects.
When the programme ends, each company gets access to TikTok's wider content ecosystem, distribution routes to foreign markets and individual consultations.
“IMDA is excited to partner with TikTok to equip our media professionals with the skills to create compelling Singapore-made microdrama for global audiences,” said Yvonne Tang, Assistant Chief Executive of IMDA's media division. For TikTok, Candera Chan added that the platform wants to “grow Singapore's microdrama ecosystem”.
IMDA is not an ordinary regulator
IMDA oversees Singapore's media and digital sector as an active investor. It co-finances productions, signs agreements with global platforms and trains local companies directly.
The agency laid the structural groundwork in December 2025, when it launched the three-year Talent Accelerator Programme worth S$200 million, roughly $148 million. The fund co-finances co-productions, films, series and adaptations of intellectual property.
Microdramas are not a fringe format. YouTube entered the space in September, and the apps ReelShort and DramaBox have built entire businesses on them. Singapore is arriving late, but with a state programme at its back.
In the same week, the same government launched a dating app
The agency GovTech opened a pilot of the FirstDate app for civil servants aged 21 to 35. Login is verified through Singpass, the national digital identity. The app sends one selected match every 72 hours and runs on the Gale-Shapley algorithm, for which Lloyd Shapley and Alvin Roth received the 2012 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. The algorithm was originally used for school admissions and for assigning medical residency placements. The website proclaims “Swipe fatigue ends here.” Applications for the first round closed on 5 October.
The reason is demographic. In 2025, fewer than 30,000 children were born in Singapore, below that threshold for the first time in sixty years, while roughly 26,500 people died. In August 2026, Prime Minister Lawrence Wong announced a package of S$70,000, or about $54,000, for every child up to the age of seventeen. FirstDate belongs to the same set of measures.
Singapore is not the first in the region. Tokyo launched a government AI dating service in September 2024, and according to Japanese government data from July 2026, 265 couples have married through it.
Singapore and Europe
In the European Union, TikTok operates under the oversight of the Digital Services Act, and the European Commission opened formal proceedings against it in February 2024. Content from models such as Seedance 2.5 falls under the AI Act in the EU. Machine labelling of synthetic content is required of tool providers by Article 50 from August 2026.
The difference in approach is clear. Singapore builds capacity through direct government programmes and agreements with platforms. Europe sets the rules and waits for the private sector to build the ecosystem.
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