In recent years, the “virtual human” market has developed rapidly, and there are countless live broadcasts brought by virtual anchors.
Whether it is a sleepless live streaming or a close approach to human sales at a low cost, the advantages of virtual people have been proven in many practices.
Rozy, the first South Korean Internet star, has generated 1.5 billion won (8 million yuan) for company Sidus Studio X in the past year, while Japanese virtual idol company Rainbow Club successfully hit the capital market in June last year, becoming the first listed company in the VTuber (virtual anchor) industry.
Since last year, Liu Yanxi burst into popularity, from investment institutions, and brand companies to content companies, and technology companies, have developed a great interest in virtual people. Open Source Securities mentioned in the relevant report that in the second half of 2021 alone, nearly 20 virtual people-related enterprises completed financing. At least from the perspective of commercial value, virtual people’s “money scene” is quite good.
What is a virtual person?
There is currently no authoritative unified definition of a virtual person. Some industry research reports from the perspective of whether fictional identity will describe virtual people, virtual people, or virtual digital people, respectively, media fusion and communication of the communication university of China compiled the China virtual digital people influence index report (2021) from the state key laboratory of virtual digital people is explained through computer graphics, speech synthesis technology, deep learning, brain science, biotechnology, computing science and other aggregation technology, and has the appearance of “people”, behavior and even thought (values) of the interactive virtual image.
Simply put, its features can be divided into the following three points: virtual, digital, and human.
“Virtual”, that is, does not exist in the physical world, but through electronic screens, VR devices, holographic projection, and other ways to appear in our daily life.”Digital”, mainly refers to that its implementation depends on the common support of a variety of computer technologies, such as graphics rendering, motion capture, speech synthesis, deep learning and so on.”People” mainly refers to its appearance, behavior, perceptual ability, interaction ability, and other aspects. Whether a virtual digital person can bring users a sense of realism and immersion, largely depends on whether its characteristics are highly anthropomorphic. For example, whether the details of the virtual digital person are beautifully modeled, whether the voice tone and the mouth action have a sense of violation, whether it can fully understand the meaning of receiving the information, whether there is its own set of behavioral logic, etc.
- The reason why the “virtual person” market is hot
The “virtual person” market is driven by the concept of Metaverse. In recent years, with the increase of Metaverse’s popularity, China’s virtual digital person industry has developed rapidly. Related industry research reports show that the core market size of China’s virtual people in China in 2021 is 6.22 billion yuan.
Zhang Daoning, the founder of Nolo VR, said, ” Mainly the Metaverse concept has dominated the ‘virtual person’ market.”Zhang Daoning said that the development of many new things is the concept, concept to promote industrial progress. After the breakdown of the concept, the industry is still progressing. After progressing to a certain extent, the concept reappears and develops side by side with the industry. New energy vehicles, even including blockchain and the mobile Internet, have been developed in this way. The concept of Metaverse is undoubtedly an important reason for the “virtual people” fire.
Other comprehensive conditions have also prompted the “virtual person” market to be hot.
The Metaverse concept makes “virtual people” the focus, but in fact, that’s not the only reason the “virtual people” market is hot.
An industry insider said that the development of the digital economy and technological breakthroughs including artificial intelligence, CG (computer animation), and hardware are all the reasons for the popularity of “virtual people”.
In addition, in terms of user needs, the development of animation culture and user visual experience needs to promote the promotion of “virtual people” popular; marketing level, virtual IP marketing activity planning also adds fire to the market. At the present stage, with the gradual maturity of upstream technologies and the expansion of downstream commercial realization channels, “virtual people” bring users a stronger sense of participation and creativity.
According to incomplete statistics, in 2020, virtual people-related enterprises financing reached 1,713. By 2021, Shunwei Capital, Sequoia, IDG, and other first-line funds have also entered the bureau, and the number of financing in the virtual human field has soared to 2,843, totaling more than 254 billion yuan.
At present, China has more than 288,000 related enterprises of “virtual people” and “digital people”. From 2016 to 2020, the compound growth rate of newly registered enterprises in 5 years is nearly 60%.
The layout of major companies on virtual people
The Metaverse prototype seems to have emerged, and the boundary between virtual and reality is being blurred. Virtual people serve as an important branch application scenario of Metaverse in the current stage. It brings not only an experience similar to human communication but also a window leading to Metaverse, which brings new changes to user communication and interaction mode, and brand communication. Both In terms of technology and commercial capital, virtual digital people have ushered in a development boom.
The Metaverse prototype seems to have emerged, and the boundary between virtual and reality is being blurred. Virtual people serve as an important branch application scenario of Metaverse in the current stage. It brings not only an experience similar to human communication but also a window leading to Metaverse, which brings new changes to user communication and interaction mode, and brand communication. Both In terms of technology and commercial capital, virtual digital people have ushered in a development boom.
ACE is based on Nvidia’s unified computing framework, with many complex AI technologies that provide users with a wealth of software tools and API. It basically covers a variety of core functions needed for virtual people, such as understanding multiple languages, responding to voice prompts, intelligent video analysis, high-performance recommendation systems, interacting with the environment and providing intelligent suggestions, and so on. These tools allow developers to unlock most of the skills needed for interactive virtual people, and to be advanced. With such tools, virtual people can have facial information as complex as real humans, smooth and natural facial expressions and movements, and mouth shapes that fit with what they say. Both ACE’s models and services are in the cloud, so companies don’t have to worry about computing power. Enterprises of any size can immediately get the large-scale computing power needed to build and deploy an avatar. This will be helpful for the mass production work of games, chatbots, virtual people, digital twins, and virtual worlds.
The Internet giant Baidu (BIDU) has already been quietly working in this respect, and the AI AI virtual anchor, artificial intelligence virtual host, and so on have appeared in different life scenes. Since the proposal of the concept of “household Internet”, Baidu has been focusing on building a “user” -centered Internet, and the focus of Baidu’s mobile ecology is on service and personalization. The progress of digital technology makes the human image of these virtual people more and more realistic. With the help of powerful AI intelligence, voice logic and natural language processing can be displayed calmly displayed, just like the state of chat with these two emotional companion virtual bloggers. We can specifically see these virtual bloggers, who have images and their own voices.
In addition, WIMI Hologram Cloud (NASDAQ: WIMI), a leader in the holographic AR industry, also has many layouts in virtual people. According to the current users’ love for virtual people, in the long run, some groups will choose to enter Metaverse in the future and have more immersive interaction with virtual people. WIMI Hologram Cloud has then invested a lot of time and energy to make breakthroughs layer by layer from the underlying technology level and the core algorithm and has made significant progress in many key technology fields such as the 3D reconstruction of the virtual human body and realistic graphics rendering. At present, WIMI Hologram Cloud has also created nearly 5,000 virtual human IPs, constantly bringing forth the new, from external to inside, from gorgeous performances to real capabilities, fully catering to the aesthetic and consumer needs of Generation Z, and creating more and more commercial application scenarios.
Conclusion
Back to the original question, what is a virtual person? From the current perspective, a virtual person is a form of content with a better user experience, which is essentially not different from paintings and movies, but because of the potential to create better content and get more traffic, it is popular in the market. According to the perspective of the future, virtual people are one of the most likely Metaverse entrances at present. Although they are temporarily trapped in the Web2.0 world, many people believe that virtual people are expected to return amazingly, and it is worth racing to seize the land.
