The future market size will reach 270 billion yuan How to base "virtual people" in the real world

Reporter Song Xiaohua Tian Mochi

Under the fiery blessing of the first year of the meta-universe, "virtual people" have more updated ways to open. How is the Virtual Man Track changing? What will it bring us?

The "virtual person" is approaching you and me

Virtual people are frequently appearing in people's field of vision:

In September last year, Tsinghua University's first AI virtual student "Hua Zhibing" appeared in front of the camera for the first time to sing. She was beautiful- and sat cross-legged, holding a guitar and singing "Boys" without emotion;

On October 31 last year, a virtual blogger named "Liu Yexi" debuted on Douyin, and only 3 videos were released to increase their fans by nearly 8 million. Liang Zikang, co-founder and CEO of Chuangyi, the IP incubation institution behind the scenes of "Liu Yexi", lamented in the circle of friends, "Ten years of grinding a sword, debut is the peak, the first video online 6 hours broke 100,000 fans";

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In order to personally visit the virtual person, recently, the reporter came to the "Super Captain" company in Pukou District, Nanjing. "Good evening, everyone, welcome to our live room." The virtual person Xiao Kai is enthusiastically interacting with the audience in the live broadcast room, and it is a "fully armed" staff member who manipulates Xiao Kai to make various actions. "This mode mainly drives the virtual person by capturing the voice and movements of the manipulator (also known as the 'middle man')." Super Captain founder Wang Lei said.

At present, virtual people have a variety of classification methods, according to the classification of technology, virtual people can be divided into algorithm-driven (AI deep learning) and real-person-driven (motion capture); according to the visual dimension classification, virtual people can be divided into two-dimensional type and hyper-realistic type; according to the business model classification, can be divided into IP category (brand, idol, star twin, etc.) and non-IP class (service type, identity type).

"Virtual people can meet the needs of different people through technology. Virtual people are not exactly equal to virtual idols, virtual idols are just a subdivision of the virtual people track. Digital people, virtual people, including virtual idols, use the same technology, but the application scenarios are different, the difficulty of development technology is different, and the essence of the three is the same. Wang Lei said.

It's no surprise that virtual people are popular. For the young "Generation Z" group, the IP image of the virtual person is very consistent with its aesthetic level and consumer demand, and the growth environment of the young group determines their higher acceptance of the virtual person. "I like to use the basic materials in the real world and replace them into imaginary time and space." This is the definition of a hobby that lovers of two-dimensional culture license to oneself. She said, "I like the virtual person 'Tussman' because I watched 'Transdimensional Night', in which Huang Zitao and 'Taosman' and 'Thurlu' performed together, and I was immediately attracted." ”

Ai Media Consulting data shows that only the virtual idol industry, in 2021, the overall market size and core market size driven by virtual idols will be 107.49 billion yuan and 6.22 billion yuan, respectively.

Grab the beach "virtual man" economy

With the outbreak of dividends in the meta-universe and the maturity of the simulation effect of virtual technology, the application scenarios of the virtual person industry are constantly enriched and warmly welcomed by capital, and Internet manufacturers and technology companies have laid out the virtual person industry, and the virtual person is moving towards the commercialization model. Since last year, dozens of virtual person startups have been favored by head manufacturers or venture capital institutions, and the cumulative investment scale has exceeded 3 billion yuan.

Nowadays, virtual human application scenarios are becoming more and more abundant. "The application of virtual people in commercialization scenarios is mainly divided into three parts." Wang Lei said that the first piece is to shoot short videos, whether it is filmed by ordinary people, or star idols, enterprises, using the form of virtual people to create short video content, there can be a wider boundary; the second type of application is live broadcasting, some anchors are not very confident in their image, prefer to use a virtual person's image as a "middle person" to live broadcast, for example, there is a "I am not white eating" anchor on the Internet, that is, a virtual person account; the third type is to endorse the enterprise, such as KFC's virtual person is no longer a kind grandfather, It's a flashback with braces and tattoos, with a touch of sexiness — Colonel Sanders.

It is worth noting that the hyper-realistic virtual idol market will develop in a spurt in 2021. For brands, anthropomorphizing the brand image and customizing virtual IP for the brand not only reduces the cost of the spokesperson, but also reduces the risk of the spokesperson rolling over. The virtual person "Lingling", the healing girl Ah Xi, and the super sister AYAYI have successively entered the public eye and become new Internet celebrities. Some time ago, the first male virtual person Chuan Chuan appeared on the social platform, which quickly aroused the attention of many netizens. Zhang Yi, CEO and chief analyst of Ai Media Consulting, believes that virtual idols have emerged in celebrity endorsements, live streaming, concerts, commercial performances, news anchors, etc., and these applications will inspire virtual idols to emerge in other corresponding fields.

It is understood that at present, the domestic virtual person industry is concentrated in Beijing, Shanghai and other places, and there are very few enterprises involved in the virtual person industry in Jiangsu, and there are no head enterprises. "In addition to technology, the core of the virtual person is the application scenario, you light modeling is useless, just like I showed you a bunch of models in the office, this does not make sense, you have to have the ability to use the virtual person in the scene." 」 Wang Lei said.

Industry insiders pointed out that at present, the virtual person industry is still in the early stage of the track, mainly appearing in network platforms such as Douyin, Kuaishou, and B station, and the application scenarios are not so rich. With the entry of more companies and institutions, as well as the improvement of simulation technology, the future of virtual people will not only be limited to the previously mentioned virtual people anchors, virtual character idols, virtual people endorsements, etc., but also may involve search engines, tourism, media, finance and other major fields, the future of its imagination space will be infinite.

Virtual person of the "inner volume"

Virtual people will also "roll inside".

On February 26, the first generation of virtual anchors "Trip Love" officially announced that they had entered indefinite hibernation after their online concert "Hello World 2022".

The reporter learned that due to the high production cost of hyper-realistic virtual people, the industry is falling into the "inner volume of the face". "You want a virtual person now, I can generate twenty thousand for you temporarily, and if you don't like it, regenerate it without problems." However, to create a perfect virtual idol, the production cost in real life is very high. Wang Lei said.

For example, the "Liu Yexi" team said that in the more than half a year before the launch of "Liu Yexi", the investment in research and development costs, personnel costs, and technical costs was "far more than one million", and the cost of the first short video of "Liu Yexi" was about hundreds of thousands of yuan.

A set of public data shows that as of August 18, 2021, of the 3472 virtual anchors that Station B has relative attention to, 1827 people have a revenue of 0 yuan that month, that is to say, more than half of them have not recorded a penny in the account. Motion capture equipment and 3D modeling require costs, and the better the effect, the higher the cost of equipment and models, which leads to many virtual anchors not making ends meet.

"If you master technology, your application ability is relatively weak; if you have strong application ability, you may lack the strength of technology research and development and support." Zhang Yi believes that between technology and application, it is necessary to find a relatively stable balance.

In the eyes of industry insiders, being able to balance cost and efficiency is the best vision of the virtual era. The virtual person in the future can be as easy as the software used on the mobile phone, and it does not need to be operated or error-free, which definitely requires strong technical support behind it to complete. Improving the user experience is at the heart of the technology. At the same time, the technology is fed back by a variety of scenarios, feedback on user needs, and improve and iterate on the product very well.

In the context of continuous updating and iteration of AI and other technologies, the virtual human industry has developed rapidly. Maybe in the future, where everyone can appear, virtual people will appear, but today you need to look across the screen, and if you wear VR glasses in the future, everything will be in front of you. According to the second world culture, the company plans to launch a new product called "VBS anthropomorphism", which will be officially launched in the second quarter of this year, with the mission of creating a "user digital identity generation system and a universal open ecosystem". With this system, the average user will be able to create a unique digital identity on their own.

In the future, the number of virtual people is likely to exceed that of natural people on Earth. Relevant reports show that by 2030, the overall market size of virtual people in the mainland will reach 270 billion yuan, ushering in a broad application space.

Source: Xinhua Daily