Zhongxin Finance, June 22 (Reporter Wu Tao) In the crowded Metaverse track, everyone sent digital people to play the front station.

What exactly is a digital human, where are digital human beings currently used, and is there any risk in using digital human?

Technology companies have launched "digital people"

　　Recently, Inke Interactive Entertainment Group officially changed its name to Ying Universe, and its business has entered the Metaverse in an all-round way.

On June 14, the MV of the song "Every Minute, Every Day" jointly sung by Baidu digital person Du Xiaoxiao and Gong Jun digital person swiped the Internet.

Live screenshots.


　　On June 15, MetaStudio, the digital content production line of Huawei Cloud, launched a new upgrade plan for the digital human, and demonstrated the "God Synchronization" between the real person and the digital human on the spot.

According to reports, its delay is less than 100 milliseconds.

HUAWEI CLOUD CEO Zhang Ping'an said that through HUAWEI CLOUD technology, one digital human will be available in the future.

　　Coupled with the previous virtual idol girl group A-SOUL, "Hatsune Miku" who often holds concerts, and "Liu Yexi", a virtual beauty expert who can "catch demons", more and more digital people are emerging. Come.

Information technology research and analysis firm Gartner predicts that by 2026, 30 percent of global organizations will have products and services for the digital and metaverse.

　　However, some analysts pointed out that the current digital human market is mixed.

For example, the so-called digital human launched by some companies is actually a virtual cartoon character, lacking in intelligence and interactivity, and even uploading a picture is a "digital human". What is the difference between this and the current account avatar?

　　According to the research report of Essence Securities, "Liu Yexi" is fundamentally different from some cartoon-like digital people. The more hyper-realistic digital people appear, we think it's like 'Liu Yexi'."

　　How realistic are these digital people?

Let's put it this way, netizens often ask questions: Is "Liu Yexi" a real person?

Digital human live broadcasts and concerts have been implemented

　　At present, digital human has been applied in many scenarios.

For example, Du Xiaoxiao can realize natural multi-round chat interaction, 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 with the interaction with users. She is a thinking "cultivation system" AI partner.

　　According to Huawei, Hunan Duodou Leman Entertainment Media created the "Fang Xiaoguo" digital human IP based on the MetaStudio digital content production line, combined with AI to achieve a single-camera drive, with an action accuracy of over 90% and a mouth shape accuracy of over 95%. Digital people live.

　　"Hatsune Miku" has held many concerts and has nearly 1.5 million fans on station B; in 2020, the virtual idol girl group A-SOUL launched by Lehua Entertainment is active on multiple video platforms; "Liu Yexi "After becoming popular on the Internet, there are more than 8 million fans on Douyin, and the short films shot are very popular among netizens, and people ask for "updates" almost every day.

The hyper-realistic digital figure "Liu Yexi".

Douyin screenshot


　　At present, the commercial value of the virtual digital human market is huge, such as customer service, shopping guide, explainer, lecturer, live broadcast anchor, news host and other roles can be replaced by digital human.

　　Taking the currently popular live streaming as an example, live streamers have limited time and energy and strong employee mobility.

After the selection of the East became popular, the anchors also took turns to play, and there was even news that the anchors were recruited with a monthly salary of 50,000.

If the digital people live broadcast and bring goods, there is no such problem, and the digital people can be online 24 hours a day.

　　More importantly, there are views 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're embarrassed to say that business has a side with the metaverse.

Risks are emerging, cost or future development is the key

　　Digital humans are in the ascendant, but some risks are starting to emerge.

For example, the question of attribution of digital people, what is the relationship between real people and digital people?

Why is it so hard to find high-quality digital people?

　　In May of this year, the Jiale rights protection incident was abuzz.

Netizens said that the actor of 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 voices, movements, emotions, etc., and then showing them through the corresponding digital people.

Screenshot of station B.

A-SOUL virtual idol.

　　Subsequently, A-SOUL officially issued an announcement saying that after internal and external investigations, there was no "bullying and squeezing" in A-SOUL's plan.

But in the end, the A-SOUL production committee and actor Jia Le terminated the contract 14 months ahead of schedule.

A-SOUL also changed from a group of 5 to a group of 4.

　　At that time, some analysts said that this involved the issue of the ownership of digital people. Even if the digital people belonged to the company, if the real actors behind the characters were replaced, it would be like shooting a sequel to a popular TV series. Both will lose.

　　It can be seen that it is difficult to incubate a high-quality digital person, and even if it becomes popular, the update frequency of works is far from "mass production".

Even "Liu Yexi" himself has been updated slowly. The Douyin platform shows that only 16 works have been updated since it was launched in October 2021.

　　There is a cost issue behind this. Essence Securities pointed out that hyper-realism also means higher technical thresholds and production costs. For example, the production cycle of a short video of 3 to 4 minutes for a digital human at the level of "Liu Yexi" is about one month.

　　Some recruitment websites show that with the popularity of the metaverse, modelers, animators, and 3D scene designers are in demand, with monthly salaries of tens of thousands of yuan, and these have indirectly pushed up the production cost of digital humans.

A-SOUL also issued an announcement saying that there are more research and development and art costs, so these virtual idols cannot compare with popular real-life artists in terms of income.

　　The Essence Securities report pointed out that the digital human is more important to reshape the business model. The Metaverse has given new vitality to the virtual digital human. Together with the digital collection, the digital human is behind the pulse of productivity and production relations under the command of the Metaverse. With a new round of IP incubation and commercialization, digital humans and their human-computer interaction are expected to be transformed and reshaped.

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