Wen | Zhang Shule (Columnist of People's Daily And People's Post and Telegraph, Observer of Internet and Game Industry)
Recently, virtual people have caught fire.
For example, 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.
The virtual idol group VSinger family shared the stage with Hard Candy Girl 303 to perform "Calories" and "Ordinary Disco".
In addition, there are CCTV News AI sign language virtual anchors, "Aijia" on a variety show, virtual beauty blogger "Liu Yexi", who has attracted 8 million fans in two months after starring in a short drama, and "Hua Zhibing", a virtual college student at Tsinghua University.
Virtual people are being introduced in all walks of life.
There is a saying that virtual people are part of the metacosm.
This statement comes from the "2022-2027 China Meta-universe Industry Development In-depth Investigation and Future Trend Forecast Report" released by China Research Institute Puhua.
The report says that virtual humans are one of the technological branches of the metacosm. Virtual human refers to a three-dimensional model synthesized by simulating real human organs through digital technology.
According to reports, this model not only has the appearance of the human body and the appearance of various organs such as the liver, heart, kidneys, etc., but also has the metabolic function of each organ, which can more realistically show the normal physiological state of the human body and various changes.
The "Virtual Digital Person In-depth Industry Report" predicts that by 2030, the overall market size of Virtual Digital People in China will reach 270 billion yuan.
Sounds mysterious isn't it?
In fact, it is a 3D modeling, and then the sound source sound library, if it is a little more advanced, it has artificial intelligence support.
"Information Times" reporter Zhang Liujing, "China Business Daily" reporter Qu Zhongfang, "Caijing Tianxia" reporter Cheng Liang and "Caijing Tianxia" weekly reporters respectively had an exchange with Shule, poor Dao thought:
Virtual people are still virtual fire, and even the hot speculation that virtual people can't figure out whether they are virtual idols or virtual digital people is itself a nonsense.
The development prospects of virtual people have two directions:
You 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.
If it is a puppet mode virtual idol, then the domestic technology is not a problem now.
The problem is that the content is not creative enough, and the number one Luo Tianyi is still far from Japan's Hatsune Mirai.
As for the virtual digital person from the perspective of artificial intelligence, the benevolent person sees the wisdom of the wise, and the previous explosion and controversy of Huazhibing is an example.
At present, virtual people actually mainly refer to the two-dimensional form of virtual idols and virtual singers.
Its scenes are gradually being derived to virtual anchors, anime role-playing, virtual guests of variety shows, and real-life concerts to form interactions or performances in the form of 3D projection.
If you look at the history of development, it can be divided into three stages:
The first is the embryonic stage (1980-1999), which is limited to technical means and stays on form and concept
A representative virtual person at this stage is the 1982 Japanese anime "Time Fortress" heroine Hayashi Myōmi, who was packaged as a singer singing an anime interlude.
MaxHeadroom, created by British George Stone in 1984, was involved in film and commercial shoots.
The second is the exploratory phase (2000-2014), where CG (a common name for the field of visual design and production using computer technology), motion capture and speech synthesis technology make the virtual human image more vivid and plump.
Representative of the virtual person is the character Gollum in 2001's Lord of the Rings, which was produced by CG technology and motion capture technology.
In 2012, shanghai Henian produced the world's first vocaloid Chinese sound bank and avatar "Luo Tianyi".
The third is the development stage (2015 to date), the rise of artificial intelligence has made virtual people deeply rooted in the hearts of the people, and the development of the social entertainment industry has promoted its commercial value.
Representative virtual people include the concept and cultural beginnings of 2016 when Trip Love formally established the concept of virtual anchor Vtuber.
In 2018, Xinhua News Agency and Sogou jointly released the "AI Synthetic Anchor", which broadcast news in a virtual human image.
But at present, virtual people are basically virtual idols, and there are not many components of artificial intelligence.
At present, the boom in virtual people is triggered by two aspects:
One is that the collapse of real celebrity star personnel is frequent, and the virtual person who never collapses has a place to play.
Compared with real idols from the past and avatars that appear as story characters, virtual idols are more like a clay doll.
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.
But this is not the main reason, the truth is that the entertainment company, driven by the meta-universe fever, has accelerated the virtual idols that have been explored in the past, after all, this is a trend in the future.
The second is that the boom in the metaverse has led to the synchronous "fever" of virtual people who can have more display space and opportunities.
In a sense, the metaverse can indeed be matched with virtual idols (puppets) and have a symbiotic relationship with 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.