"AI Digital People" Future Top Ten Prospects丨Tech Prophets

Yang Yan/Wen

The era of virtual and real integration internet has begun.

In 2021, we have ushered in a new boom and new opportunities for the development of digital people, including the advent of various explosive IPs, as well as pioneer enterprises from various industries such as pan-entertainment, news media, sports events, retailers, and financial services, and together with leading technology companies and CG creation companies, they have explored new scenarios, new models and new boundaries for the application of AI digital people in their respective fields.

For this area, we believe there will be ten major directions for the future.

Outlook 1: An important starting point for industrial digital transformation

With the in-depth application and deep integration in the fields of pan-entertainment, commercial retail, financial services, cultural tourism, cultural and cultural exhibitions, medical and health, sports events, etc., the refinement and specialization of digital human services will continue to bring cost reduction and efficiency value feedback for industrial development, with the improvement of "human efficiency" as a breakthrough and become an important starting point and core standard for industrial digital transformation.

Outlook 2: The core "human" assets of enterprise competition

Ai digital people are different from ordinary CG-made digital people, which are not only a digital asset affiliated with the enterprise, but as an important digital "human" asset, it has become one of the core competitive advantages of the future development of enterprises. AI digital people based on the "wisdom of the brain" can continuously update the cognitive system through independent learning, thereby achieving the sustainable development of "human" resources and creating greater value for enterprises.

Outlook three: Aging has spawned the demand for "companion" digital people

Social aging has not only brought about a sharp decline in the demographic dividend, but also the aging itself is accompanied by the spiritual loneliness of the elderly group, as well as a series of psychological or physiological diseases. A survey found that about 1/3 of the elderly between the ages of 60 and 70 have a sense of loneliness, and about 60% of those over 80 years old. Social aging is also giving rise to the demand for "companion" AI digital people, especially the existence of a large number of solitary and orphaned elderly people in society, through the "companionship" of AI digital people to help alleviate mental loneliness and improve the social problems associated with aging trends.

Outlook 4: The "online" (DHaaS) of development platforms is the trend

Digital Human as a Service (DHaaS) online development platform will become PUGC's "innovation toolbox", empowering AI digital people to generate, drive, intelligent, and operate the "full link" production and operation process, sharing a rich material library, knowledge base, and content library, helping to significantly reduce the application threshold and use cost of digital people through the simple operation of "Lego", covering long-tail UGC users and small and medium-sized enterprise users to quickly have their own" Digital human production line", the first time from the platform to enjoy the world's leading technology dividends at the same time, to achieve AI digital human freedom.

Outlook Five: The basic composition of the future virtual-real fusion world

With the gradual maturity of artificial intelligence, virtual reality and other related technologies, AI digital people will become an important entrance to our connection with the digital world, an important medium for human-computer interaction, and together with digital space, digital assets, and digital avatars (Avatars), which constitute the basic structure of the future virtual-real integration world. Just like the smartphones we use every day today, through mobile applications, we not only quickly establish a connection relationship with the two-dimensional cyberspace, but also obtain a convenient life experience by interacting with mobile applications. In the future, we can also realize direct connection with the three-dimensional cyberspace through intelligent software such as AI digital people (AI Agents), and enjoy a richer and more immersive service experience through virtual and real interaction.

Outlook Six: Data security and user privacy protection remain key

As one of the basic components of the digital world, digital people also face governance challenges such as data security and network security. Especially as digital people become more and more permeable in production and life, playing an increasingly important role, their system security will become extremely important. In addition, digital people, as a medium of human-computer interaction, will also involve user privacy and ethical issues in daily applications. These need to be addressed through the establishment of a series of regulatory and safeguard mechanisms, as well as by assisting technical means.

Outlook Seven: High-level digital people rely on general-purpose AI technology for development

Under the leadership of a number of artificial intelligence technology enterprises, the development of digital people has entered the initial stage of L4 level, and has been significantly improved rapidly in production efficiency and intelligence level, which can replace real people in professional fields to solve some repetitive and standardized service needs. But to evolve to a higher level, it needs to rely on the development and maturity of general artificial intelligence technology, so that it can deal with global and universal problems like humans. At present, the artificial intelligence leaders represented by SenseTime are committed to the research and development of general algorithm models, and carry out full-stack technology layout and integrated development in various directions such as vision, speech, and natural language understanding, so as to build a good underlying infrastructure for the realization of ai digital people's leap from L4 to L5 level.

Outlook 8: "Cloud edge" collaborative computing supports the future of large-scale applications

With the gradual expansion of the application boundaries of AI digital people and the deepening of applications in various industries, the high authenticity, high real-time and high concurrency of AI digital people not only have higher requirements for network transmission, but also put forward higher requirements for the real-time rendering and AI computing capabilities of AI digital people. On the one hand, through low-latency network transmission and cloud-side collaborative computing, the performance limits of the large-scale application of AI digital people on the terminal hardware can be reduced, and the terminal equipment or system that supports any model, specification and performance can seamlessly access and use the AI digital person; on the other hand, the data training and self-learning process that supports the AI digital people themselves involves data security and privacy considerations, and also needs to be coordinated deployment of the cloud edge to ensure.

Outlook 9: The confirmation and circulation of digital human assets will promote the activity of the trading market

As one of the forms of digital assets, the ownership relationship and value of digital people need to be certified by the market in order to further promote the smooth progress of market transactions. Therefore, based on blockchain technology, the establishment of a confirmation and circulation mechanism for digital human assets will be very important.

Outlook 10: The development of the digital human market will give birth to a number of new formats and new opportunities

With the construction and empowerment of platform infrastructure, more and more enterprises will join the digital human industry ecology, the division of labor in the digital human market is becoming more and more subdivided, around the diversified and refined application needs of vertical fields, a large number of innovative enterprises or innovative occupations such as digital human AI training, digital human material creation, digital human asset management and services will be born, and a number of B2C, B2B, C2M-style digital human retail platforms will be further formed to match and match new needs and new supplies.

(The author is the director of strategic ecology research of SenseTime Intelligent Industry Research Institute)