Halfway through the Winter Olympics, our emotions are also fluctuating in the midst of a lively competition. In the Gu Ailing freestyle skiing competition, Wu Dajing's gold medal in the short track speed skating team competition was intense; he also debated the silver medal results of young snowboarder Su Yiming, and regretted the winter Olympic results of top figure skater Yu Sheng.
In recent days, most of the news hot search and emotions have contributed to this top sports feast, if you want to get some emotional respite, you can try to return to the technology and technology behind the Winter Olympics, be proud of the black technology displayed in the window of this world, and calm the emotions in the trough.
The cheetah high-speed camera out of the circle during the Winter Olympics, the zero-emission carbon dioxide ice, the artificial snowmaking core technology that breaks through the standard blockade, and the intelligent train have gathered the most cutting-edge scientific and technological achievements. In this world window, show off the rich technical muscles. Among these technological achievements, the most conspicuous may be the image of various virtual digital people. If you continue to pay attention to the event, in various broadcast platforms, you will always see the busy figure of virtual digital people, or broadcast the progress of the event for thousands of viewers in silent sign language, or talk about analyzing the event. At the Winter Olympics, the figure of virtual people is everywhere.
The ubiquitous Winter Olympics digital man
Judging from the holding process of the Winter Olympics, the virtual people have participated in the whole process from the beginning. From the very beginning of the "Meet in Beijing" Olympic Cultural Festival opening ceremony, virtual singer Luo Tianyi showed his singing voice and sang "Time to shine" to ignite the venue and cheer for the promotion of the Winter Olympics.
The virtual digital human idol is only the opening of the virtual digital person at the Winter Olympics, and there is no shortage of virtual people's images throughout the Winter Olympics.
If classified from the perspective of the application of virtual digital people, it can be divided into service virtual people and identity virtual people. The virtual people of the Winter Olympics are also mainly in these two categories. These two types of digital virtuals also exist primarily as a complement to the News Coverage of the Winter Olympics.
The highest rate of appearance is the CCTV News AI Sign Language Anchor, a long-term and sweet sign language anchor who can provide professional and accurate sign language commentary for the audience. And this sign language virtual anchor has the title of "24 hours a day", it is reported that after the Winter Olympics, the virtual sign language anchor will be open all year round, for the hearing impaired group to do a good job of news coverage.
AI sign language virtual anchors are typical service-oriented virtual people. Identity-type virtual people emphasize their personalities, such as virtual idols, real human digital twins, etc.
Virtual singer Luo Tianyi, hot search possessed Olympic athlete Gu Ailing digital person double, CCTV anchor Wang Bingbing digital person double, weather host Feng Shu's digital person Feng Xiaoshu and so on. These virtual digital people rely on their own personalities to attract traffic, report and narrate for the Winter Olympics, and bring new and strange experiences to the audience.
Athlete Gu Ailing's recent hot search reports are too much, it is estimated that many readers are brushed to the screen to get bored, we take the weather channel host Feng Shu as an example, to see the virtual digital human body refining process.
(Virtual weather anchor Feng Xiaoshu)
Behind the birth of Feng Xiaoshu is the technology provided by Microsoft Xiaoice. It is reported that Microsoft Xiaoice completed the study of Feng Shu himself in only 1 week through deep neural network rendering technology and small sample learning technology. After the voice, mouth shape, face rendering expert model training, virtual digital people can perfectly get Feng Shu's own mouth movements, eye and face muscles between the synergistic relationship, the overall naturalness of his face, expression, body movements is almost the same as that of real people. If there is no special emphasis on the identity of digital people, it is almost impossible to distinguish between false and true.
Observing the application scenarios of virtual people in the Winter Olympics, we will find that the virtual people have changed from the computer CG technology of the originator Hatsune Future Idol to the current transformation through the upgrading of AI technology, the sign language anchors that can be translated instantly and the virtual people who are fake and real, and the time span of more than ten years, the technical accumulation of virtual digital people has taken a qualitative leap. Driven by technology, digital virtual people in the world window of the Winter Olympics, focusing on the achievements of recent years.
The rise of virtual digital people
The virtual digital people visible to the naked eye have developed rapidly in the past two years. The cool and ancient style of the virtual idol LING Ling, fashion blogger AYAYI, virtual beauty master Liu Yexi, these powerful virtual anchors are familiar to many young fashion viewers with virtual digital people. In the science and technology circle, Hua Zhibing, a virtual student at Tsinghua University's Knowledge Engineering Laboratory, such a highly anthropomorphic digital person shows the most cutting-edge technical capabilities of virtual people to the public.
The more common landing is virtual tour guides, anchors, digital astronauts, etc., most of which are digital human solution services launched by technology companies for traditional B-end customers. There is no one to set up a pile, this kind of virtual digital person as a replacement of enterprise employees, instead of the enterprise for the simple production and interaction of content, for the enterprise products and technology to promote and serve.
We can find from the application scenarios of virtual people that their application areas are mainly in the entertainment and service industries. Whether it is the increasingly mature picture presentation of digital idols or the integration of 5G, AI and other comprehensive technical capabilities to improve, the scenes where virtual people land have gradually become richer.
The virtual digital person "Cui Xiaopan" of Vanke, the largest worker, represents the technical level of virtual people in the office scene. With the blessing of the system algorithm, Cui Xiaopan can play a role in various receivables, overdue reminders and work anomaly detection with an efficiency of thousands of times higher than that of humans. The write-off rate of prepaid receivables/overdue documents that she urged reached 91.44%.
(Virtual digital beauty blogger Yoo Ye-hee)
From the exquisite virtual idols that initially attracted attention to specific applications in social, gaming, office scenes, etc., in live e-commerce, idol endorsements, companionship services, etc., virtual digital people have realized commercial monetization.
The technical service providers behind them are a number of leading technology enterprises with strong technology and financial resources, such as Baidu, Tencent, iFLYTEK, Ali, etc., as well as AI technology start-ups such as Zhongke Intelligence and Yungang Technology. Under the accumulation of their own AI technology and the future of the meta-universe, these enterprises will enter the virtual digital world as a pioneer force and seize the cake of the virtual digital world.
No matter what kind of identity and technical capabilities are displayed, the entire market is showing a prosperous scene, and we will see a continuous increase in various virtual people. Their rise is not unrelated to the rapid development of AI capabilities and digital technologies.
Deeply investigating the essence of the popularity of virtual people is the gradual generalization of the virtual digital world. The boundaries between the real world and the digital world continue to merge and blur, virtual digital people are the most suitable carrier for the connection of these two worlds, as the entrance to the virtual digital world, whether it is visual, immersive experience, or the display of comprehensive technology, virtual people in this time and place opportunity, become a bridge between the two worlds communication and integration. However, in this seemingly blossoming market, the development of virtual digital people driven by technology is still in the initial stages of development.
Crossing the divide and evolution
The technical capabilities of digital people displayed in the Winter Olympics almost represent the highest level of digital virtual people at this stage. With the blessing of 5G, AI, digital technology, etc., virtual people at this stage can interact with human voice and gestures through self-learning and algorithm capabilities. In such well-funded sporting events, it's easier to focus on creating and presenting digital people who fit the coverage of the event. However, in the process of extensive landing, there are still many obstacles to the development of virtual digital people.
From the perspective of the application of virtual people, identity digital people such as idol Luo Tianyi, Gu Ailing and other digital doppelgangers, such digital virtual people need to be operated by IP people. In particular, virtual people with idol nature need excellent professional works and content creation to continue the vitality and commercial value of human design. This also raises the threshold and cost of its application. It is reported that a single of a virtual idol costs nearly 2 million yuan from the arrangement to the character image, stage design, etc., plus the cost of publicity and promotion, and the cost of training will even exceed that of the real idol.
And the virtual digital people of the service class, the technical ability is uneven. Our ultimate imagination of the virtual person is the natural flow of interaction with the person, and the experience of the real person interaction is silky, but this requires the comprehensive technical ability of the virtual person. The analysis and processing capabilities of various basic AI such as NLP, machine vision, and TTS speech synthesis need to reach the top level at the technical level. The requirements and costs of technology are too high, and the complex technology and lengthy customization cycle make it impossible to quickly and widely promote it.
In the process of development of virtual digital people, there are also unavoidable ethical issues. In the process of face recognition technology, AI face swapping and other technologies, such public opinion risks have occurred. Humanoid virtual people, there will also be risks such as counterfeit substitution of character archetypes, and the price of public attention is to be magnified by countless magnifying glasses, bringing the possibility of sliding into the abyss.
The laws of the Tao reveal that in the process of development, things will always go through peaks and valleys. The ending achieved overnight is as short as a flash in the pan, and insisting on the right choice in the long run is a must for going to the sea of stars. The continuous deepening of the no-man's land in the digital world, the thorns are inevitable.
From the exploration period to the growth period, digital virtual people are still in the initial climbing period, and the level of intelligence is currently relatively rudimentary, unable to cope with the complex working environment. There is still a "long slope" to be overcome before the application of generalization. But in the current display of these windows, we also glimpse the future of virtual digital people: powerful analysis and data processing capabilities, diversified identities and silky services, and the virtual digital world is gradually enriched and three-dimensional.
From flat graphics and audio, to real-time silky 3D interaction, the dissemination of information continues to rise in dimension. In the future, we will also have a metaverse "oasis" virtual world similar to that in "Ready Player One": the digital person of the intelligent emotional level humanoid, the real person under the replica digital mask, the natural and smooth interactive experience, and the virtual reality that is difficult to distinguish between true and false.
Whether in the real world or the virtual world, virtual people will be the best supplement to humanoid life forms, enriching the digital world and having unlimited vitality and imagination space.