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"Cherish the person who makes you angry, because he's at least human."
Nowadays, more and more avatars "digital people" appear in online live broadcasts and information broadcasts.
"To make a digital person, cheap tens of thousands of yuan, more expensive need millions, tens of millions."
Where will these digital people use them, and who will buy them?
The price is not standard, up to tens of millions
Once out of reach, digital people are no longer new in scenarios such as online live broadcasting and information broadcasting. Li Shiyan, head of Baidu's intelligent cloud AI human-computer interaction laboratory, even said: "In two years, everyone is expected to achieve 'digital human freedom'." ”
So how much does it cost to make a digital person? Li Shiyan revealed to the Beijing Business Daily reporter: "Cheap tens of thousands of yuan, more expensive need millions of yuan, more refined and concurrency requirements are high, tens of millions of yuan will also be there." ”
Taking the digital human anchor with high maturity at home and abroad as an example, the Beijing Business Daily reporter learned from a number of digital human startups that it takes 30,000-50,000 yuan to customize a cartoon-style digital person, plus facial and full-body motion capture, computer and mobile phone live broadcast system for a total of 90,000-200,000 yuan.
"The most expensive thing in our company is the hyper-realistic digital person, which you can understand as a digital person made according to a real person, and it takes 500,000-700,000 yuan to customize a single one," Zhang Duo (pseudonym), who works in a digital customization enterprise, told the Beijing Business Daily reporter.
Zhang Duo said that the current price point from low to high is a cartoon digital person, a two-dimensional digital person, a pseudo-real digital person, and a hyper-realistic digital person. A cartoon-level digital person + facial expression + motion capture, plus a set of software and hardware live broadcast system that can be configured on computers and mobile phones at the same time, not more than 200,000 yuan, the price of the two-dimensional level digital person plus the same supporting technology and system is between 200,000 and 280,000 yuan, and the pseudo-real digital person series is 400,000-450,000 yuan.
Li Ming (pseudonym) works in a digital human customization company, the pricing is more detailed than Zhang Duo's company, if you want to customize a digital person who can live broadcast, you need to buy two projects, one is the digital person image custom development, the other is the digital person live broadcast technology. According to the quotation, if you want to buy a digital person and system that can be broadcast live, you need to spend at least 90,000 yuan.
On baidu's B2B platform love procurement platform, the price of digital people such as intelligent digital customer service, virtual anchors, intelligent financial advisors, and virtual idols is unified at 500,000 yuan / set.
When talking about why there is no pricing standard for digital people at present, Jiang Zhaosheng, senior researcher of Ouke Cloud Chain, said that the production capacity of digital people is insufficient, "At present, the overall maturity of the digital people industry is not high, the market competition is very fierce, and most of the current domestic application scenarios need highly customized digital people design, resulting in its inability to quickly copy and promote, so there is no unified pricing standard in the market."
Maybe one in the future?
The concept of the metaverse is hot, and intelligent assistants with high correlation with digital people have long been predicted to have one person.
According to Li Shiyan's classification of digital people, digital people are divided into two categories: service type and performing arts type, service type includes virtual employees, digital customer service, digital financial management specialists, and virtual trainers, and performing arts type includes virtual anchor/host, virtual idol, virtual IP/star, and digital binary.
In contrast, showbiz digital people have more opportunities in front of the stage and are easier to contact with the public. Luo Tianyi, a virtual singer under B Station Holding Company, He Chang, a virtual singer based on artificial intelligence Xiaoice framework, and "Na Xiaoyan", a virtual anchor of Douyu, are all performing arts digital people.
"At present, virtual anchors, virtual idols and other digital IP digital people for ordinary users have a high degree of maturity and are also the most fiercely competitive areas for commercialization. Virtual teachers, virtual customer service and other service-oriented digital people are the subdivisions that are expected to be broken in the future, and in the longer term, as an important actor in the meta-universe, virtual doppelganger digital people may enter a stage of rapid development," Jiang Zhaosheng told Beijing Business Daily reporter.
Li Shiyan believes that what is currently slowing down the large-scale application of digital people is production capacity.
At present, most of the production of virtual people still use 3D modeling + motion capture, this traditional way, can produce film quality virtual people, exquisite and delicate, but the cost is very high, can not produce more virtual people.
According to the production cycle given by Zhang Duo, "it takes about 2 weeks to make a cartoon digital person, 4 weeks for a two-dimensional digital person, and 6 weeks for a digital person who is a real person."
According to Li Shiyan's plan, "the future of digital people must be made by artificial intelligence, only in this way can we meet the massive demand of the future." I hope that in the past two years, through the opening of Baidu's intelligent Cloud Xiling platform, everyone will realize the freedom of digital people."
Banks and live streaming teams place orders
For enterprises, the price of digital people may not be a large amount, but there is still a threshold from ordinary users. A person working in a digital human service company revealed: "Most of our customers are enterprises, and most of the anchors with teams who purchase digital human live broadcast services are almost no personal anchors." ”
When the Beijing Business Daily reporter communicated with the customer service of Baidu digital person platform Xiling, the other party also said bluntly: "What we provide is a customized solution, the price is relatively high, it is for some large enterprises, such as a digital assistant for banks, etc., not for ordinary users." ”
But is there only one way to customize? Nor is it. There are digital service providers that also provide rental services.
"It is to rent the digital people we have customized, and then match the hardware and systems to be used for live broadcasting, but there are very few customers who rent," Zhang Duo revealed. As for which customers are buying digital people, Zhang Duo and Li Ming have made it clear that enterprise customers place more orders. "Even if it is purchased by anchors, most of them are anchors with teams," Li Ming added.
Can you compete with a live anchor?
At present, more and more avatars "digital people" are in the network live broadcast platform. Does this mean that the living space of live anchors is squeezed?
It is reported that Douyu began to develop anchor technology from 2019, and has successively launched nearly 10 official digital anchors.
The relevant person in charge of Douyu revealed to the Beijing Business Daily reporter the original intention of launching a digital anchor, "The live broadcasting industry has developed to the current stage, and users have higher and higher requirements for the richness and diversification of live broadcast content. The emergence of digital anchors can enrich the platform content ecology, provide users with more diversified interactive gameplay, and also provide greater imagination space for live broadcast platforms in terms of traffic monetization and IP monetization. ”
According to the reporter's understanding, the attitude of real anchors to digital anchors is not the same.
Anchor Zoe (pseudonym) told the Beijing Business Daily reporter that he did not pay attention to the digital human anchor, "the network live broadcast is already a virtual environment, the user acceptance is too low, the digital human anchor will affect the user's consumption desire, some simple scenes can be applied, but the show live broadcast is affected by emotional factors and consumption intentions and other factors are not suitable for digital anchors."
Vova (pseudonym) has a very different attitude. She paid attention to the live broadcast of digital people because she "saw that the screeners had used the anchors, and originally thought it was an animation effect, but later learned that the digital people seen by the audience captured the actions and expressions of the live anchors behind the scenes." I also thought about making one myself, but digital people live broadcasting is best achieved by computer, which is more troublesome. ”
The anchor of the real anchor behind the digital anchor has more say, and the anchor who operates the digital anchor of the yingke digital person "can sing panda" said in response to the difference between the two types of anchors, "There is no difference, but behind the scenes will be more comfortable, for some shy anchors, it will be more comfortable to use digital anchors."
Compared with various live broadcast scenes, Jiang Zhaosheng believes that "the current news reports or other scenes that only require simple Q&A interaction are more suitable for digital anchors."
Reporter 丨 Wei Wei
Image source丨Beijing Business Daily, screenshot of the official website of Love Procurement, screenshot of Baidu Xiling platform, screenshot of the official website of Yingke, etc
Editor 丨Sun Rui