Teaching Others to Use AI Becomes a Lucrative New Business in China

Artificial intelligence is making many traditional skills cheaper and easier to access. But a surprising new business is emerging alongside the AI boom:teaching other people how to use AI.

A recent investigation into China's growing AI training market found that people are increasingly paying for courses, consulting services and corporate training designed to help them apply AI tools to real-world work.

The price range is extremely wide. Some AI tutorials sold on second-hand marketplaces cost as little as 9.9 yuan, while paid communities charge hundreds of yuan. Individual AI consultants can reportedly charge as much as 2,000 yuan per hour, and some corporate consulting services cost around 20,000 yuan per month. At the high end, a single corporate AI training session has reportedly been priced at as much as 300,000 yuan.

The figures have raised a basic question:If AI can teach people how to use AI, why are customers still willing to pay human trainers?

The answer increasingly lies beyond basic tutorials.

Learning how to create an account, write simple prompts or generate text with an AI chatbot is becoming easier. What companies and professionals are often willing to pay for is something more specific: how to integrate AI into their existing workflows.

Lawyers, for example, may need advice on handling confidential information and using AI in legal work. Doctors may use AI to organize large amounts of information. Businesses may want employees to use AI for presentations, document analysis and data processing, while e-commerce operators may use it to produce marketing content more efficiently.

As a result, some AI trainers are moving from teaching software features to teachingAI-powered workflows.

The people entering this market are not necessarily traditional teachers. Some come from fields such as law, media production or consulting, while others simply started experimenting with AI earlier than their peers and accumulated practical experience.

That experience can then be turned into courses, consulting packages, paid communities and corporate training programs.

The market is also becoming increasingly specialized.

Early AI courses often focused on individual tools and basic prompting techniques. Customers today are more likely to ask a different question:Can AI solve my specific problem?

A lawyer may want to automate document-related work. A business owner may want to improve employee productivity. A content creator may want to reduce production time. These needs require knowledge of both AI and a particular industry.

This could make “AI plus industry expertise” an increasingly important business model.

The trend is not limited to China. Overseas markets are also seeing growing demand for AI instructors and corporate training. Some AI companies have started building trainer programs to help small businesses adopt AI for accounting, marketing, customer management and other operational tasks.

However, the AI training business also faces significant risks.

The technology changes extremely quickly. A technique that requires a paid course today could become a built-in feature of an AI product within months. At the same time, free tutorials are becoming increasingly abundant.

That means trainers may need to provide more than basic knowledge. Practical experience, industry-specific workflows, case studies, consulting and access to useful resources could become more important as competition increases.

Ironically, AI training may also become one of the industries most affected by AI itself.

AI systems can already generate educational materials, create presentation slides, answer student questions and develop personalized learning plans. Standardized AI courses could therefore become increasingly difficult to differentiate.

The high-income examples reported in the market should consequently be viewed as individual cases rather than evidence that anyone can easily make a fortune by teaching AI.

Still, the emerging market reveals a broader shift in the AI economy. From low-cost tutorials to premium consulting and corporate training, AI education is developing into a layered business ecosystem.

The deeper story may be that AI competition is moving beyond the question ofwhich company has the most powerful model.

It is increasingly about who can help ordinary workers and businesses turn AI capabilities into measurable results.

As AI becomes a standard part of everyday work, teaching people how to use it may remain a profitable opportunity—but its long-term value will likely depend less on knowing a particular tool and more on solving real business problems with it.