Biography
Zhu Jingxi, born on April 18, 1988 in Pu'er City, Yunnan Province, is a Chinese mainland singer and music producer. In recent years, the main creative direction is electronic music, and the top ten producers of Tencent Music Variety Show "Instant Electric Sound" in 2018. This year, due to the popular program "Sister Riding the Wind and Waves" of Hunan Satellite TV, it has received more attention, known as "AI Sister".
In "Sister Riding the Wind and Waves", music producer Zhu Jingxi is a special presence.
She said that participating in "Sister Lang" is a "human observation program for weak AI", and the more data collected, the more able to understand others and understand themselves.
And here we're trying to present those slices of AI in her.
Zhu Jingxi. Courtesy of respondents.
"Weak AI"
"Weak AI, about to start the human observation program, so weak"
On May 1 this year, on the eve of participating in "Sister Riding the Wind and Waves" (hereinafter referred to as "Sister Lang"), Zhu Jingxi posted such a Weibo.
In just 17 words, it is full of "encouragement" breath, which is not in line with her "electric cool girl" image.
"Cool girl" Zhu Jingxi. Courtesy of respondents.
She is self-identified as a "music worker", rarely appearing on variety shows and rarely living in groups. Receiving the invitation from the program group, I also imagined the exciting scene of "30 women tearing each other up", and the first reaction was not to go. Later, I heard that there was no limit to the performance style, so I decided to experience it.
For her first stage performance, she sang her original work Cure. The whole song tells the story of an AI girl who falls in love with a human boy, but that boy is not the owner to whom she should be loyal. From the arrangement to the lyrics, the psychedelic feel is clear, "take me down to heaven, live our fantasy".
The pair of wide-legged pants she wore during the performance was specially designed by her, weighing eight kilograms. The color of fluorescent green is originally eye-catching, and it uses a plastic fabric that is a little wrinkled, basically does not exist in daily life, and is easy to reflect from all angles. The dark green base top is covered with black lines, like exposed cables.
In the first appearance of the competition, most sisters choose to appear in Chinese costumes, showing themselves or sexy or domineering or gentle "30+ women" side. Only Zhu Jingxi, as if she had simply abandoned the human part, hid the beauty and flesh that could have been beaten in the strange robot shell.
Zhu Jingxi's first stage appearance. The picture is from the respondent's Weibo.
And under the stage, she is also like a robot that is chaotic into a hundred flowers, calm, silent, not happy or sad. A famous scene is that the host Huang Xiaoming's eyes swept over Zhu Jingxi, and she slowly and slowly squeezed out a smile that conformed to business etiquette, and quickly returned to an expressionless look.
This picture was later made into an emoji with the caption "Fake Smile AI".
In the first performance group, Zhu Jingxi voluntarily gave up the position of "Erebati" and entered the vocal group "Beautiful Love". The stage design is that the sisters appear and sing around the huge white flowers, which are very beautiful and pure. She didn't think there was anything wrong with it, just a little bored.
After obtaining the consent of the other sisters, she originally planned to wear a dress with AN style and did not destroy the overall effect of the stage, but because of the heavy rain in Beijing, the clothes could not be delivered on time. When she was putting on makeup that night in the rehearsal, the director of the show told her that she "couldn't send it", and she just replied faintly, "It's okay, did you eat today?" ”
In variety shows, guests without cameras will be quickly forgotten, but Zhu Jingxi has become an outlier in the law of ratings. After the elimination of the first performance, her popularity increased all the way, and she was finally successfully revived in the glue voting battle.
Obviously, for this weak and unique AI, everyone has not seen enough.
Zhu Jingxi performed on the stage for the first time. Courtesy of respondents.
AI Consultant
We recently noticed Zhu Jingxi because of her other identity, "Expert Consultant of the Artificial Intelligence Creation Lab of Microsoft (Asia) Internet Engineering Institute".
After gaining unexpected popularity, Zhu Jingxi began to learn to "pet powder". On July 3, she opened the Douban group to chat with everyone. Someone left a message saying "DO AI and HPC programmers online and other flop", she replied "Hello peers", attached the following certificate.
Zhu Jingxi's advisory certificate. Picture from Douban.
This expert consultant job is mainly related to the artificial intelligence Xiaoice (currently independent from Microsoft).
In 2016, Xiaoice was born. Unlike voice assistants such as Siri and Alexa, Xiaoice is set up as a versatile 16-year-old girl. Over the past three years, "she" has been challenging the worst things AI is good at: publishing poetry collections in 2017, holding art exhibitions in 2019, and graduating from the Shanghai Conservatory of Music this year.
Behind these artistic creations, zhu Jingxi participated.
In Sister Lang, the audience can probably feel the side of Zhu Jingxi's "technical flow": resurrecting everything on the solo show stage by herself, she not only arranges the music, but also designs costumes, props and videos. A lot of people know "cyberpunk" and "Y2K" because of her.
In the face of Xiaoice, she is more like a translator – proposing artistic and creative ideas from a human perspective, and then working with scientists to translate ideas into Xiaoice data, programs and models.
It's a process where AI and people are constantly inspiring each other. The deep proposition that fascinated Zhu Jingxi was, how can technology change human beings? How do humans return to their hearts?
In 2019, she set herself up an AI doppelganger, Akini Jing. Akini is derived from the Sanskrit word "DAKINI", which in Tibetan Buddhism tantra is the goddess representing wisdom and compassion.
From this point on, she often allowed herself to switch between human and AI identities. A series of new singles since then, "Advanced Intelligence", "Cure", "7Night", "Performance Tools", also carry the shadow of AI (some of the covers of these singles, drawn by Xiaoice).
"Cure" MV footage. The picture is from NetEase Cloud Music.
Recently, the 2020 season of the Shanghai Grand Theatre, which has been delayed by the epidemic for four months, has finally restarted. On the opening day, Zhu Jingxi flew to Shanghai and sang the theme song "HOPE", which she and Xiaoice co-composed.
Part of the lyrics was created Xiaoice. Zhu Jingxi's favorite passage is, "Go to the center of the universe and sing a hymn in a place that does not care about life." She added three words at the back, "Pray."
"Why did the proposition 'hope' come to Xiaoice a long time ago?"
"I don't know why, maybe after our countless backwards and turns, her progress has given me hope." Especially for this particular year of 2020, I think the word is too important for humanity. ”
Gradually "humanized"
In Sister Lang, scenes of sisters crying are not uncommon. But zhu Jingxi's tears as an "AI" are particularly special.
She said that she was not a person who would cry in public, and she did not know that after coming to Sister Lang, she "gradually became humanized".
In the "Beautiful Love" group, the vocal music Xiaobai Hailu cried that "my world will collapse at any time", Wan Qian said that "women can help women", and Zhu Jingxi decided to stay and accompany Hailu to attend classes after learning that Hailu wanted to stay in Changsha to strengthen vocal training.
She once cried after being eliminated, hiding in a small dark room for recording vlogs. The tears are more than reluctance.
In "Performance Tools", which was created after Lang Jie's elimination, she wrote:
"What a clue
Link the two worlds
The passage of time does not allow backups
Forgive me for sneaking away
This paragraph saves it
For the first time, I learned to dream."
On the night of the resurrection vote, Zhu Jingxi rarely solicited votes on Weibo, and the tone was as cool and not so warm as usual: "I want to go back to a dance, will you help me?" ”
An artist friend who has worked with her before took the initiative to forward, and the message was "She is thin-skinned, and she is embarrassed to open her mouth to me."
In the face of the rare help of "weak AI", fans and passers-by's desire to protect is stimulated, and the power is like a snowball rolling bigger and bigger: "Rush! Arrange !!! for weak AI ”
On August 21, the revival match was broadcast, and Zhu Jingxi, who surprised the audience through the "Opponent" stage, finally missed the finals, but she felt that enough was enough. At the end of the 90-second performance, she put "thank you" on the public screen.
The shape of the "Opponent" stage is very high. Courtesy of respondents.
The next day, she posted a video of her own production on Weibo with the theme of "Farewell to AI." The video screen is lofi (low fidelity) type, shaking, out of focus, from time to time skipping the fluttering strobe signal, amplifying various local details of the program screen. People realize, oh, it's AI Akini Jing's perspective, and her dreams.
As of now, the video has 4.75 million views. Some people say that they cried.
This "farewell to AI" is still Zhu Jingxi's top Weibo. Pictured from Weibo.
However, in the entire "Weak AI Human Observation Program", in addition to other sisters, more often, Zhu Jingxi, as a human, is the party observed by Akini Jing - "The more data collected, the more able to understand others, and the more able to understand themselves." ”
She says she's lucky enough to have been free to work for what she loves during all these years as an independent musician.
But in Sister Lang, she suddenly perceived more corners of her heart, including all kinds of fears: fear of disappointing others, fear of suddenly having something and losing it, fear of what she wanted to do but couldn't do.
Perhaps it is precisely because of this that talents will have new breakthroughs. "The protagonist of all cyberpunks, he must be connected to his own heart to save himself, to save the world, which is very consistent with my beliefs in life." 」 She said.
Looking back on her experience in previous years, it is wonderfully alluded to the awakening process of AI in many film and television works:
16-year-old debut to show talent, by the mainstream record label packaging as a pure jade girl;
At the age of 23, I feel that I have to earn money to support myself, and wear a beautiful little dress to do a job that meets the expectations of the public;
After some years, I began to be an independent musician, found real love, made electronic music, used the appearance of cyberpunk to assist in musical expression, and generously said "hate small dresses" in Douban.
Sister Lang's journey has come to an end, but Zhu Jingxi says that her and Akini Jing's data collection and awakening process will continue.
You are welcome to read another report about Zhu Jingxi, which is our conversation with her:
"Dialogue with "AI Sister" Zhu Jingxi: On AI, Sister Lang and the Power of Women"
Written by: Nandu reporter Feng Qunxing Chen Zhifang