Text: Liu Yiqi
Edit|Si asked
The middle-aged men, who are known as "the most difficult to be leveraged by e-commerce", fell under the pomegranate skirts of AI beauties.
The phrase "middle-aged men are not as good as dogs" has always been regarded as a true portrayal of middle-aged men in the chain of consumption contempt. Women who love to eat money buy cosmetics and clothes, and women at home buy kitchenware and food, but when it comes to men, it seems to be "soaking wolfberries in a thermos cup" or "hitting the world with a fishing rod".
On the content platform, a group of AI beauties with good faces and proud figures have set their eyes on middle-aged men who have always been neglected.
"A single mother born in the 80s", like most real people, her personal introduction was written on the homepage of "Little Sister". But if you look closely at the content of her short video, you can still detect that something is wrong. In the video, she has a sign smile but a dull face, and a graceful figure but no interaction. With the same angle and background, sometimes the products displayed are different, and if you distinguish them carefully, you can even hear different timbres in the video.
In the face of the confusion of some viewers, the platform gave the answer at the bottom of the video: the content is suspected to be generated by AI. Although it is an AI beauty anchor, it does not affect some fans to send roses in the comment area, and some people directly greet "Hello beauty".
With the AI beauty video, the number of fans of "Little Sister" is as high as 1.1 million. Chan's mother data shows that in February this year, "Little Aunt" released a total of 118 videos, with a total sales of 75,000-100,000 yuan. In December last year, the number of videos was as high as 258, and the total sales were between 250,000 and 500,000 yuan.
On average, about 10 videos are released every day, and the output value of each video is nearly 1,000 yuan. On the Internet platform, AI anchors like "Little Aunt" are not alone. They are a part of the assembly line, and there is an industrial chain of batch replication behind them.
AI beauty, aiming at male customers in the sinking market
One second the camera was still a beautiful woman wearing an off-the-shoulder skirt and smiling at the camera, and the next second, a neatly arranged array of windproof lighters suddenly appeared on the screen. There is no superfluous voiceover introduction, and the yellow letters on the screen clearly indicate the key points of this video: lighter, a few cents a piece, limited price, and quick grab.
Tangtang, who has 1.276 million fans, is also an AI beauty anchor. There is no plot, no character design, and the label of Tangtang is extremely obvious. Chan's mother data shows that Tangtang released a total of 71 videos in February, of which the number of videos with goods accounted for about 93%, reaching 66.
Like the beauties who dance sexy and hot dances, the users attracted by AI beauties are also dominated by men. The number of male fans of "Little Aunt" is as high as 86.28%, and from the perspective of age data, users over 40 years old account for more than 60%. The proportion of male fans in Tangtang is as high as 92.11%. Nearly half of the fans are over 50 years old.
On the market, most of the influencers are emphasizing the young market, high-priced products, and female users, compared to AI beauties, who seem to be taking an extremely "unpopular" road. Their targets are: sinking market, low-unit price products, middle-aged and elderly male users.
It can also be seen in their selection. In addition to a lighter for a few cents, there are also 6.88 yuan of steel core nylon rope, 6.99 yuan of old Beijing cloth shoes, etc.
When seeing this price, many people will wonder: Can you make money by being so cheap? When you open Tangtang's report card, the first place in sales is a razor priced at 6.99 yuan, with a commission of 16 percent, and the second in sales is a black pepper seed priced at 9.9 yuan, with an open commission of up to 50 percent. These products are mainly cheap and practical, not only the commission ratio is beyond most people's imagination, but the return rate is also very small compared with clothing and other categories.
Among the AI beauties, some rely on their appearance, and some rely on providing emotional value, and the number of fans of "Chocolate, Little Lemon" on the Douyin platform is as high as 10.49 million. In the video, she mostly appears as a half-length image, and the content released is about 30 seconds, and the theme mostly revolves around men. For example: "Why do many men choose to live alone now?", "A boy who can enjoy loneliness is not an ordinary simple person", "If you leave a man out for too long, even if he loves you again, he will choose to leave"......
Many male fans refer to "Chocolate, Little Lemon" as "the woman who knows herself best". But if you look closely, the mouth shape of "Chocolate, Little Lemon" does not match the lines in the video, and the AI-generated signs are obvious, but almost no one raises doubts.
On the Douyin platform, in addition to the small print reminder of the system, the identification of AI anchors mainly depends on the naked eye, the edge lines of digital people and background will be blurred, the posture is relatively stiff, and the mouth shape changes are not so unsmooth. Young people who are familiar with Internet routines naturally have a certain ability to distinguish, but it is not easy for users from the sinking market who do not understand AI technology to distinguish them.
Some people are busy making money, and some people are busy defending their rights
After the AI fire, "how to seize the new outlet and make money by AI" has become a topic that many people are keen on. On Xiaohongshu, there are more than 30,000 notes related to AI making money, and more than 20,000 notes related to AI anchors.
Successful cases like "Little Sister" and Tangtang have attracted many people to enter the game.
We have found the promotion content of AI video generation software on many platforms. In the video, we can see the detailed operation steps, first select the product according to the preference of bringing goods, enter the second creation page, and then edit the content according to the line copy reference generated by the example. After the goods and content are built, you can not only choose the AI model that will appear on the camera, but also match it with different character voices. There are many options such as entertainment broadcasting, sweet commentary, and strong girls.
In the promotional content, users only need to click their fingers on their mobile phones, and they can easily produce a video with goods by an AI anchor within a minute.
In order to attract users, the software platform also released attractive data, such as this month's output commission of 1.7566 million yuan, and the sales of novices in 7 days of 2354 yuan. "After the live broadcast of goods, AI graphics and text will be the next outlet", and such remarks abound on Internet platforms.
From a technical point of view, it is not a video with a high threshold to copy the videos of "Little Sister" and Tangtang in batches. Their videos hardly involve interactive effects, just pictures or a splicing of fixed videos, sound effects and products. However, whether the actual effect of bringing goods can achieve what is said in the promotion content needs to draw a big question mark. Scam companies, pure cutting leeks, real pig killing plates...... On the Black Cat platform, many people who were attracted by AI brought goods have voiced their rights protection. There were as many as 329 complaints related to AI delivery, most of which were due to "false publicity".
A consumer who spent nearly 400 yuan to buy a software membership told reporters that the video effect generated by the software is very rough, and the so-called mentor accompaniment is almost ineffective. Some AI software will even use the way of earning commissions to promote the development of new downlines for paid members.
An AI virtual human in an awkward position
Whether it is launching a short video talent or replicating a live broadcast room with goods anchors, AI digital humans are no longer a new topic. In 2022, the head anchor Yu Dagongzi interacted with his twin man Lianmai, and in May last year, Li Jiaqi and the virtual human AYAYI started a cross-dimensional dialogue; in order to fill some unpopular time periods, the virtual person has also become a resident member of the live broadcast room of many brands.
But we can't deny that at present, AI delivery experts have not yet entered the mainstream market.
First of all, visually, there is still a certain difference between virtual people and real people. In the eyes of many consumers, virtual humans are more like a soulless holster, lacking the intimacy of interacting with real people. Secondly, the technology of virtual humans is still stuck in visual recognition, and the output of content information is still relatively thin. Leaving a message in the virtual human live broadcast room without real person operation, most of them can only output prepared standard words by identifying fixed keywords. Finally, the key to keeping users sticky is usually the personality of the master and the personality of thousands of people, which is also lacking in virtual people.
Not only has it not entered the mainstream market, but many businesses in the market have also used AI to exploit legal loopholes in order to make profits.
An AI anchor who looks like Yang Mi
"I thought it was Li Kui, but I didn't expect it to be a Li ghost", during the 315 period, the news of fake Yang Mi and fake Liu Yifei selling slimming tea in the live broadcast room attracted a lot of attention. In order to leverage the influence of celebrities, some businesses use AI to swap faces to let them give their live broadcast room platforms. In the face of consumer skepticism, they are secretive. Not long ago, some businesses used AI technology to resurrect the deceased celebrity, which was also stopped by the celebrity's family and condemned by public opinion.
It is conceivable that with the continuous development of technology, the difficulty of mass manufacturing AI beauties will become less and less. But for the traders behind it, technology is only one part of improving human efficiency. In order to achieve effective and sustainable business transactions, product selection, operation, and even luck are all indispensable.