Source: China News Network
Zhongxin Finance, June 22 (Reporter Wu Tao) Crowded meta-universe track, everyone has sent digital people to play the front station. What exactly is a digital person, where is the current use of digital people, and is there a risk in using a digital person?
Technology companies have launched "digital people"
Recently, Yingke Interactive Entertainment Group officially changed its name to Ying Universe, and its business has fully marched into the meta-universe, and signed a digital person "Yingying" as the brand spokesperson of Ying universe. On June 14, Baidu Digital Person Du Xiaoxiao and Gong Jun Digital Person jointly sang the MV of the song "Every Minute, Every Second, Every Day".
On June 15, MetaStudio, a digital content production line of HUAWEI CLOUD, launched a new upgrade plan for digital people, and demonstrated the "god synchronization" of real people and digital people on the spot, and jumping "Liu Qihong" is not a problem. According to reports, its latency is less than 100 milliseconds. Zhang Pingan, CEO of HUAWEI CLOUD, said that through HUAWEI CLOUD technology, each person can have a digital person in the future.
Coupled with the previous virtual idol girl group A-SOUL, the "Hatsune Mirai" who often holds concerts, and the virtual beauty master "Liu Yexi" who will "catch the demon", more and more digital people have emerged. Gartner, an information technology research and analytics firm, predicts that by 2026, 30 percent of the world's organizations will have products and services for digital people and metacosms.
However, some analysts pointed out that the current digital human market is mixed. For example, the so-called digital person launched by some companies is actually a virtual cartoon character, lacking in intelligence and interactivity, and even uploading a picture is a "digital person", what is the difference between this and the current account avatar?
According to the research report of Essence Securities, "Liu Yexi" is essentially different from some cartoon image digital people, is a "hyper-realistic virtual person", and its circle has led to the rise of hyper-realistic digital people, "In the future, there will be more and more hyper-realistic digital people, and we believe that it is similar to 'Liu Yexi'." ”
How realistic are these kinds of digital people? Put it this way, there are often netizens who ask: "Is Liu Yexi" a real person?
Digital people live broadcasting and concerts have been applied
At present, digital people have been applied in multiple scenarios. For example, Du Xiaoxiao can achieve natural multi-round chat interactions, and identify users' search and service needs in the dialogue. According to reports, in terms of user experience, Du Xiaoxiao can not only chat and interact smoothly and freely, but also grow deeply with the interaction with users, and is a thinking "cultivation system" AI partner.
According to Huawei, Hunan Duodoule Entertainment Media built a "fangxiao pot" digital person IP based on the MetaStudio digital content production line, combined with AI to achieve single camera drive, with action accuracy of more than 90%, and the accuracy of mouth shape reaching more than 95%, realizing digital person live broadcast.
Hatsune Mirai has held a number of concerts and has nearly 1.5 million fans on Station B; In 2020, the virtual idol girl group A-SOUL launched by Lehua Entertainment was active on multiple video platforms; After "Liu Yexi" became popular on the Internet, there were more than 8 million fans on Douyin, and the short films filmed were favored by netizens, and almost every day some people asked for "updates".
At present, the commercial value of the virtual digital person market is huge, such as customer service, shopping guide, explainer, lecturer, live streaming anchor, news host and other roles can be replaced by digital people.
Taking the current hot live broadcast with goods as an example, the time and energy of real anchors are limited, and the mobility of employees is also strong. After the oriental selection fire, the anchor also took turns to play, and even spread the news that 50,000 monthly salaries were recruited for anchors. If the digital person live broadcast with goods to achieve, there is no such problem, digital people can be online 24 hours.
More importantly, there is a view that digital people will serve as the basic unit and identity carrier of users in the metaverse ecology. If you don't launch a digital person, you are embarrassed to say that the business is on the same side as the meta-universe.
Risks are emerging, cost or future development is key
Digital people are on the rise, but some risks are already beginning to emerge. For example, the question of the attribution of digital people, what is the relationship between real people and digital people? Why are high-quality digital people so hard to find?
In May this year, the JiaLe rights protection incident was hyped up. Netizens said that jiale, one of the members of A-SOUL, was squeezed by the company and suffered unfair treatment. It is understood that each member of A-SOUL corresponds to a real person, providing sounds, movements, emotions, etc., and then displaying them to the outside world through the corresponding digital people.
Subsequently, A-SOUL officially issued a notice saying that after internal and external investigations, there was no "bullying and squeezing" situation in A-SOUL planning. But in the end, the A-SOUL production committee and actor Jia Le completed the termination of the contract 14 months ahead of schedule. A-SOUL also changed from a 5-man group to a 4-man group.
At that time, there was an analysis that involved the ownership of digital people, even if the digital people belonged to the company, but if the real person behind the role was replaced, it was like shooting a sequel to a popular TV series, once the original team could not be used, the company and the actors may lose both.
It can be seen that it is difficult for a high-quality digital person to incubate, and even if it becomes popular, the frequency of work updates is far from reaching "mass production". Even "Liu Yexi" itself has been slow to update, and the Douyin platform shows that from the launch in October 2021, only 16 works have been updated now.
This involves the cost of the issue, Anxin Securities pointed out that hyper-realism also means higher technical thresholds and production costs, such as "Liu Yexi" level of digital people, 3 to 4 minutes short video production cycle of about a month.
Some recruitment websites show that with the popularity of the metaverse, modelers, animators, and three-dimensional scene designers are popular, and their monthly salaries are often tens of thousands of yuan, which indirectly pushes up the production costs of digital people. A-SOUL also issued an announcement that there are more research and development and art costs, so these virtual idols cannot be compared with popular real artists in terms of income.
Anxin Securities report pointed out that digital people are more important to reshape the business model, the metacosm has given the virtual digital people new vitality, the digital people together with the digital collection, behind the metacosm under the leadership of the productivity and production relations of the pulse, bringing a new round of IP incubation and commercialization, digital people and their human-computer interaction is expected to be transformed and reshaped. (End)