Reporting by reporters Li Kunkun and Li Zhenghao from Beijing
With the rise of AI, digital human virtual anchors began to accelerate the influx of live broadcast rooms. For example, during this year's "6.18", JD.com launched the "Yanxi Virtual Anchor" product, Jingdong's "6.18" war report shows that the opening is 10 minutes, and the number of businesses in the digital human live broadcast room increased by nearly 400% compared with last year's "Double 11".
Talking about why businesses use virtual anchors, Ding Daoshi, president of the Speedway Research Institute, said in an interview with the "China Business News" reporter, "In this way, the first business can not need so much investment, especially for some small and medium-sized companies, if he wants to hire an anchor, if calculated according to salary, an anchor often earns more than 10,000 yuan a month, and a good anchor also has a pit fee." If you use this AI virtual human as an anchor, the cost is controllable and economical. Therefore, for some companies that need to do product broadcasting in batches and have relatively limited budgets, they can try AI virtual anchors, but whether this effect is good or not is another matter. ”
The virtual host "hacks" the live broadcast room
Recently, the reporter swiped an account called "Million Business Watch" on Douyin, which is a virtual anchor, not only has its own broadcast videos, but also interacts with the audience in the live broadcast room. The reporter asked him a question in the live broadcast room, and the other party also replied. As of June 20, the other party has released 4 videos and gained 1,397 followers.
In addition, it is understood that brands such as Estée Lauder, L'Oreal, and Procter & Gamble are also trying to access virtual anchors to serve live streaming e-commerce.
Ding Daoshi said that the topic of virtual anchors has been hotly discussed recently because many places used virtual people to do live broadcasts during "June 18", and the rows of mobile phones and computers are very spectacular. "This kind of unmanned live broadcast, there was a live broadcast base in Linyi, Shandong last year, and they typed out the concept of unmanned anchors at that time, and used AI anchors to replace people for live broadcasts." Ding Daoshi said.
Compared with traditional anchors, AI digital humans have the advantage of being able to broadcast live for a long time and carry out uninterrupted information broadcasting, which can continuously improve brand exposure and greatly reduce labor costs and operating expenses. Moreover, AI digital human virtual anchors do not need salaries, and the personality is more secure and stable, and will not be affected by real anchors, thus effectively avoiding the risks caused by the departure of excellent anchors.
However, live streaming e-commerce needs to solve the problem of trust, without the endorsement of real people, it is difficult for virtual anchors to attract human orders. A person in charge of a leading beauty brand said that at present, digital humans are not widely used in store broadcasts, mainly used during 11 to 12 o'clock at night, and digital people will not be used in important holiday promotions and prime time.
In addition, the live broadcast effect of digital humans may not be good enough and not vivid enough. Many businesses bluntly said that the current conversion rate of virtual anchors is not high, and the ability to bring goods is far inferior to that of real anchors. "Virtual streamers are 'too fake', rudimentary, lack emotion and personalization, and it is difficult to attract users to place orders."
At present, whether it is Taobao live broadcast, or Douyin or Kuaishou live broadcast, you can see the list if you do well, and the top 100 do not have virtual anchors, all are real anchors. And most of the time it is a live anchor who operates as a team.
Talking about the demand for virtual anchors in the live broadcast industry, Zhang Yang, co-founder and chief analyst of iAnalytics, said in an interview with reporters, "The Z generation represented by the post-95 generation on the consumer side is an important driving force for AI digital human live broadcasting, with nearly 200 million users in 2023, and their acceptance and loyalty to the novel AI digital human live broadcast are high. On the supply side, AI digital humans have a significant effect on driving GMV (gross commodity transactions) growth and reducing corporate costs. Through AI digital humans to provide brand senior consultants and delivery services, on the one hand, it realizes 7×24-hour live broadcast, effectively driving the brand GMV and live broadcast conversion rate increase; On the other hand, compared with real people, the cost of enterprise live broadcast employment has been greatly reduced. ”
Do digital humans have a future?
After the birth of the virtual singer "Hatsune Miku", he has 600 million fans and 10 billion yen worth around the world. In 2020, domestic virtual idols have also risen rapidly, and virtual humans have been updated and iterated. In 2021, virtual singer Luo Tianyi appeared on the Spring Festival Gala. As of August 2021, station B (Bilibili) has more than 36,000 virtual anchors, more than half of which has a monthly income of 0, and the top 120 virtual anchors take more than 90% of the income. That is, 0.3% of the head users eat up most of the market share.
Since Chatgpt became popular, the reporter saw an entrepreneur who was an AI digital anchor in the circle of friends, and recently saw that he posted such an advertisement in the circle of friends: "The new AI digital human cloning system can reduce costs and increase efficiency for all walks of life, it only takes three minutes to clone a digital person, real human dubbing, fully automatic execution, hundreds of digital human images of different styles for you to choose..."
However, the reporter watched the virtual anchor case he posted, and when doing video broadcasting, the lip shape was not right, very similar to a dummy, and the effect was not very good.
At last year's "Global 1024 Developer Festival", Liu Qingfeng, chairman of iFLYTEK, revealed that iFLYTEK can generate a virtual anchor in 5 minutes. After the release of the industry's first virtual human interaction platform at this year's "Global 1024 Developer Festival", Liu Qingfeng said that a virtual anchor can be customized in 1 minute.
These digital people can freely choose their image and style according to the needs of merchants, and carry out 24-hour uninterrupted live broadcasting. It is reported that at present, the minimum monthly cost of customizing an AI digital human anchor is only a few hundred yuan.
Sima Huapeng, founder of Silicon-based Intelligence, showed a set of data: Up to now, Silicon-based Intelligence has produced nearly 1.5 million digital humans, reached cooperation with more than 300,000 merchants, reached cooperation with more than 40,000 e-commerce live broadcast rooms, and cooperated with many millions of fans.
Talking about the application industry of AI digital humans, Zhang Yang said, "Government, e-commerce, finance, etc. are important industries for the application of AI digital humans, and the scope of application continues to expand. In the banking industry, the demand for digital people not only continues in national stock banks, but also gradually expands its application in regional banks. In addition, according to research and consulting institutions Ai Analysis interviews, financial institutions such as securities and insurance are also making key procurement plans. ”
Can AI digital humans replace anchors in the future? Ding Daoshi believes, "I think most of the anchors and creators will be replaced in the future, but at this stage, it is more about playing an auxiliary and helping role, as well as the role of our inspiration expander, which is the meaning and value of our assistant." ”
Zhang Yang believes that after the hot market in 2022, the popularity of the AI digital human market has declined, and the overall is in the trough period after the bubble period. It is expected that in the next 2-3 years, as the value of AI digital humans continues to increase, the penetration rate will continue to increase. According to the statistics of Ai Analytics, the market size of AI digital humans in 2023 will be 2.5 billion yuan, mainly composed of digital human live broadcast, digital human virtual activities, digital human customer service, etc.
"Policy-driven, policies represented by the Beijing Action Plan for Promoting the Innovation and Development of the Digital Human Industry (2022-2025) have put forward clear development requirements for the digital human industry. In the process of future landing, continuous policy stimulation is an important driving force for AI digital human live broadcasting. Technology-driven, with the development of large models, the obstacles affecting the further application of digital humans in the live broadcast industry will be qualitatively solved, the multimodal image of digital humans and the accuracy of interactive answers will become higher and higher, and it is expected to reach a high availability level in 2-3 years, and the proportion of AI digital human anchors will also reach a high proportion. Zhang Yang said.
In terms of platforms, on May 9, Douyin released the "Platform Specification and Industry Initiative on AI-generated Content", which mentioned that publishers should clearly identify AI-generated content to help other users distinguish between virtual and real, especially confusing scenarios; The platform will provide unified AI-generated content identification capabilities to help creators mark the mark. Virtual humans need to be registered on the platform, and users of virtual human technology need real-name authentication; The platform will provide the ability to register virtual humans and protect registered avatars.
(Editor: Wu Qing, Proofreader: Zhai Jun)