"The big fish swims through the crevices of the dream, staring at the silhouette of your sleep..."
On the evening of December 31, 2021, at the 2022 New Year's Eve concert of Jiangsu Satellite TV, singer Zhou Shen sang classic songs such as "Big Fish" with Teresa Teng presented through virtual technology.
Wen | Zhang Shule (Columnist of People's Daily And People's Post and Telegraph, Observer of Internet and Game Industry)
In recent years, thanks to the breakthrough of artificial intelligence technology, the "virtual digital people" represented by virtual anchors and virtual idols have entered the public eye.
With the fiery concept of the metaverse, the advent of the era of "real digital people" has been accelerated.
Many companies and large manufacturers have laid out this track.
As a result, more and more people believe that virtual singers, virtual anchors, and virtual idols will become virtual digital people.
Will it?
We can simply list virtual idols and virtual singers as puppet-shaped virtual digital people.
Artificial intelligence such as Microsoft Xiaoice, Hua Zhibing, and Xiaomi's Xiaoai Classmate are Pinocchio-shaped virtual digital people.
The metaverse can indeed be matched with virtual idols (puppets) and has a symbiotic relationship in VR technology.
But the metaverse is currently only a prehistoric stage, and the virtual idol presentation ability that VR technology can carry is pixel-level.
That is, it is slightly better than Mario in the red and white machine era, and its overall performance ability cannot achieve at least two-dimensional anime style or 3D stereoscopic rendering effect of virtual idols.
The current state of the meta-universe does not really inject vitality into the virtual idol industry, but the technology will mature in the future.
Each person can reshape their own image and personality in the metaverse, which is more plump than the anthropomorphic characteristics and flat characters of virtual idols.
Therefore, the so-called development opportunity is nothing more than a far-fetched one.
As for the virtual digital people that exist in the figurative existence of artificial intelligence, such as Xiaowei and Hua Zhibing, there is an essential difference between them and the virtual idols of "puppets" that are actually manipulated by humans.
Of course, it doesn't have to be presented through VR.
From a technical point of view, China's virtual digital people are also in the initial stage.
If it is a puppet mode virtual idol, then the domestic technology is not a problem, the problem is the lack of content creativity, the first ranked Luo Tianyi and Japan's Hatsune future is still a great distance.
As for the virtual digital person from the perspective of artificial intelligence, the benevolent person sees the wise.
Just from the perspective of virtual idols, the popularity of virtual idols satisfies the urgency of different groups of people.
For non-two-dimensional people, this urgency comes from alienation, and it is necessary to have a breakthrough in the aesthetic fatigue of conventional idols, especially the current small fresh meat.
Obviously, Ta from the second dimension gave a very surprising, stunning and surprising debut.
At the same time, a virtual idol is more like a clay doll than a real idol from the past and a virtual avatar that appears as a character in the story.
In addition to the collapse of the human settings that do not have to consider the real stars, all the other settings except for the songs often need to be made up by the fans themselves.
The plasticity of this kind of human design makes fans and manufacturers feel "profitable", especially in the context of some traffic stars who have set up a car.
Virtual idols and virtual digital people will definitely converge in the future.
That is, the virtual idol that was originally just a puppet will become Pinocchio due to the development of AI, which will be more realistic and the scene can be wider.
This includes replacing humans in some real-life scenarios with VR, 3D imaging, robotics, or other forms, doing some entertainment, service, or more.