On the 7th, the upstream news reporter learned that in the upcoming Winter Olympics, there will be elegant and kind virtual sign language anchors "using technology to cross the sound barrier". The metacosm may still be a mirror flower, but the virtual digital person has already shone into reality.
Xiaoice company's digital twin virtual person N Xiaohei has been broadcasting the "Daily Economic News" for 70 days, but no one has found his true identity;
The Department of Computer Science of Tsinghua University announced the official enrollment of virtual student Hua Zhibing, starting her study and graduate career in the laboratory of the Department of Computer Science of Tsinghua University;
Hua Zhibing, Winter Olympics virtual sign language anchor / Source: Sina Weibo
Xia Yubing, a graduate student of the Central Academy of Fine Arts, held a solo exhibition of "Al-ternative Worlds of the World of Chance" at the Art Museum of the Central Academy of Fine Arts;
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Who is Li Weike? A virtual girl invested by ByteDance
From Ayapolis to Yunaleska and Hatsune Mirai, the imprint of virtual idols has long entered everyone's mind, and with the successive entry of a large number of startups and technology companies, from the twin virtual person N Xiaohei of Xiaoice to the virtual hip-hop singer HAJIANG Hasai, more and more virtual characters have entered our lives.
Speaking of virtual people, in China, we have to mention an industry leader, that is, ByteDance, which has been in the sky in recent years.
On January 6, ByteDance invested in a virtual girl - Li Weike, and the first virtual person financing this year was released. ByteDance said that Li Weike is laying out the XR track and plans to launch mass-produced XR glasses this year, and the financing will be used for product research and development and continuous incubation of IP, and the company will also prepare to launch a new round of financing.
According to public information, Hangzhou Li Weike Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Li Weike") was established on October 15, 2021, and the founder of the company is Ru Yi.
The company created an AR technology brand named "Li Weike" and a virtual IP image of the same name, which is the first CG meta-universe virtual digital character independently developed and created by the company. Its main creative team said: "We want to build Li Weike into China's first AI virtual digital person with a real emotional connection, so that our AR glasses not only have beautiful looks, but also have interesting souls." ”
It is reported that its main creative team has frequently released the golden sentence of "Li Weike" in the form of video content on platforms such as Douyin and Xiaohongshu; and even opened up Li Weike's video comic drama "Weike WAKE" on the b station alone. As a hyper-realistic virtual digital person, "Li Weike" uses the means of content to build his own three-dimensional human design.
But her more important landing scene is to appear in the AR glasses as an AI person and interact with the user. In Ru Yi's view, "We can't do everything, but we can maximize the virtual IP and human emotional link in limited scenarios." ”
Why is virtual digital man so hot?
Today, the opening of the Winter Olympic Games is imminent, and the Central Radio and Television Station has added a new CCTV News AI sign language virtual anchor, which can not only report the Winter Olympic news, but also accurately and timely live broadcast the sign language of the event. Since the beijing Winter Olympics, we will use "AI" wisdom to provide sign language services for friends with hearing impairments.
In fact, virtual digital people are not a new word, it was produced before the rise of the concept of metaverse, which can be traced back to the birth of computer animation technology.
In the 1980s, the Japanese animation "Chrono Fortress" appeared in the virtual song Hime Hayashi Akimi; the virtual person Max Headroom, created by the British, also participated in the filming of many movies and advertising films; as well as the avatar characters in blockbuster movies such as "Avatar", "Spider-Man", "Venom" and other blockbusters, these virtual IP created through motion capture technology and AI synthesis technology have been deeply rooted in many film and television works.
With the gradual maturity and popularization of digital twins, deep learning, AI audio-visual recognition and other technologies, virtual digital people are no longer limited to film and television works, and are entering people's lives in more fields, and have more life experience and interactive functions. For example, in 2017, Bilibili launched the "Virtual Dimension Plan" to create the first generation of domestic virtual UP masters Xiaoxi and Xiaotao; in 2019, SPDB and Baidu jointly released the digital employee "Xiaopu".
The epidemic can be said to be an important watershed in the development of the virtual digital human industry. Under the background of normal prevention and control of real space, people tend to seek more social interaction scenes in the digital world, so the construction and discussion of the virtual world are gradually increasing, and the relevant technologies and elements are gradually being constructed.
Especially since 2021, the discussion about the metaverse has ushered in an unprecedented heat, and the virtual digital human beings as the embodiment of human characters in that world have also taken advantage of the opportunity to attract more attention.
Liu Yexi, a virtual beauty blogger who exploded on Douyin, has been on the hot search for 3 consecutive days since the release of the first video dynamic on October 31, 2021, and a video has gained more than 2 million fans. At present, there are only 4 videos under Liu Yexi's account, and its number of fans has approached 8 million.
The virtual idol girl group A-SOUL jointly launched by Lehua Entertainment and ByteDance has reached 2.49 million yuan in November 2021 on the B station. On December 11, 2021, A-SOUL launched a new song "The World of Legends" in the first anniversary live broadcast, co-produced by Xu Song and Fang Wenshan, featuring "The Fusion of National Style and Poetry".
Luo Tianyi/Source: Weibo
Big factories have laid out capital pouring into the track
The popularity of virtual digital people has attracted a number of startups and large factories to enter the game, and capital has also moved in response to the sound and poured into this track.
In 2020, the core industry scale of China's virtual idols was 3.46 billion yuan, an increase of 68.8% year-on-year, and the market core industry scale CAGR in 2017-2020 was 62%. According to Tianyan, as of November 2021, there were 13 virtual digital people-related investments, concentrated in virtual digital people, virtual idols and related technologies in the pan-entertainment field; a total of 10 related investments in 2020 and 6 related investments in 2019.
CITIC Securities analysis pointed out that at this stage, virtual people are mainly innovative roles in the field of pan-entertainment, bringing about a revolution in new models such as content, social networking and entertainment in the integration of virtual and real. From a long-term point of view, virtual people are an important infrastructure of the metaverse, which will continue to evolve and develop with the development of the metaverse, as an intelligent robot in the virtual and real space, reduce service costs and improve service efficiency, and the growth space of the virtual human track is worth looking forward to.
Among A-share listed companies:
Tianzhou culture: virtual anchor neighbor Xiaoxian full platform fans 8 million, Xiao Ya classmates full platform fans 2 million, the company has 2 virtual anchors who have debuted in the B station: String Yu, Yingke, has made gains in the B station.
Chinese Online: Cooperate with a number of virtual digital human technology companies and industry-leading AR/VR/MR/XR companies to develop technologies and application scenarios based on digital virtual people and virtual and real combinations in the field of content IP.
Ofi Entertainment: Virtual Idol Studio has now launched popular characters such as Super Flying Hero team members Ledi, Xiao Ai, and Bao Sheriff, as well as cute chicken squads such as Mackey, Duoduo, Bakken Bear, Andrae Demon Fairy Group - Xiaolan, Yan Lili and other popular characters.
At this moment, there are countless virtual people being born, and they are changing the real world little by little. The major spokespersons in the mall began to be replaced by virtual people: Bose announced that the hyper-realistic digital person AYAYI became the brand's chief noise elimination experience officer, Ranji invited the popular male virtual person Chuan Chuan as the trend experience officer, Zhong Xuegao launched the special guest tasting officer Ah Xi Angie, Watsons launched Qu Chenxi Wilson..... What will the future of the human world be like? How many more sci-fi scenes are playing out? We'll see.
Upstream news is integrated from the Financial Associated Press, Sina Weibo, Tianyancha, Yiou Network, etc