Real idols "fall down" and virtual idols "stand up"?
At present, virtual idols mainly appear in the form of virtual anchors, star virtual avatars, and brand spokespersons.
For example, virtual idols can upload videos on social platforms, interact with users live, and have their own exclusive personalities to meet users' needs for interactivity.
——Chen Jianwen, Professor, School of Information and Communication Engineering, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China
Recently, Jiale, one of the members of the virtual idol group A-SOUL, officially announced that it has entered the dormancy of live broadcast, which has caused extensive discussion among the public.
As a combination of entertainment and technology, virtual idols can hold performances, brand endorsements, and participate in live broadcasts, which has become a new ecology in the entertainment industry.
According to the "Virtual Digital Human Depth Industry Report", by 2030, the overall market size of my country's virtual digital human will reach about 270 billion yuan.
What is the technical logic of virtual idols?
What is the business model behind it?
Specifically, how should the virtual idol-related market be regulated?
This emerging outlet has gradually become the focus of attention.
Metaverse wave promotes the development of virtual idol industry
At the end of November 2016, Japanese idol Kizuna.AI opened a channel on the YouTube video site and gained about 400,000 fans within 4 months.
However, unlike other anchors, Kizuna Ai is a virtual idol produced by computer technology, and she has also become one of the early representatives of virtual idols recognized in the circle.
In recent years, with the rise and continuous development of the metaverse concept, the attention of virtual idols has been raised to a new height.
"At present, virtual idols mainly appear in the form of virtual anchors, star virtual avatars, brand spokespersons, etc. For example, virtual idols can upload videos on social platforms, interact with users in live broadcasts, and have their own exclusive personalities to meet users' needs for interactivity "Chen Jianwen, a professor at the School of Information and Communication Engineering at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, said that live video has the characteristics of low threshold, large audience, and diversification. Its popularity provides a wide range of application scenarios for the initial development of virtual idols and the verification of virtual digital human technology.
From a technical point of view, the development of the virtual idol industry benefits from the continuous progress of speech synthesis, virtual character simulation and other technologies. The core technologies involve computer graphics, computer vision, deep learning, optimization algorithms and many other fields. It also includes character feature modeling, identity-action feature decoupling, feature driving, high-precision mapping, etc.
"The production of traditional virtual idols generally uses mature motion capture and face capture technologies to render 2D or 2.5D cartoon images, which are characterized by low cost and easy implementation. In recent years, the industry is also exploring new technical routes to achieve A virtual idol with the appearance of a real person." Chen Jianwen explained that such technologies generally follow the following process, that is, the digital virtual idol character model is used as the data base, the virtual idol dynamic driving method is the link, and the expressions and actions of real people are synchronized through various algorithms. Migrate to digital virtual idols to realize the "activation" of virtual idols.
In fact, behind every virtual idol, there is basically a real person who drives them to "activate". Such a real person is usually called "the person in the middle" in the industry.
Since it is a virtual idol, why do you need real people to drive it?
Chen Jianwen said that the core point of real-life driving is still needed, because the interactive ability of virtual idols has not yet reached the corresponding level.
"A virtual idol is not only an avatar that can move, sing and dance, but his/her key core is to be able to interact with the audience like a real person. However, the high-fidelity 'anthropomorphic' interaction is an extremely high level of technology at the current level. Challenging missions that cannot be achieved in open-ended conditions."
Therefore, in response to the demand for open interaction, the current virtual idols still need to be driven by real people to meet the fans' needs for the intelligentization of virtual idols.
However, in some scenes with a fixed script and less interaction, such as stage performances, it is still possible to make a virtual idol without a human driver.
"In addition, if you want virtual idols to be more 'anthropomorphic', you need to continue to break through related technical bottlenecks in natural language processing (NLP) and knowledge graphs." Chen Jianwen said that the current technological breakthroughs for virtual idols are mainly focused on computers. In the visual field, that is to say, the virtual idol can be very similar to the real person in appearance, but when the virtual idol interacts with the user, the expressions, language, and actions still do not have the feeling of a real person.
And these are the important factors that will make virtual idols more and more "anthropomorphic" in the future.
The commercial ability of virtual idols should not be underestimated
From the rise of the Bubble Mart blind box series to the hot sales of Disney's Lena Belle peripheral products, people have seen the powerful monetization ability of intellectual property (IP) in today's era.
With the gradual maturity of technology, the application of virtual idols has gradually been promoted from online live broadcast to more abundant scenes such as film and television drama production, online concerts, etc., and gradually began to rely on IP traffic monetization to realize the operation of the business model.
"From the perspective of company operation, virtual idols are highly operable and can greatly reduce operating costs for the company; there are very few adverse consequences such as crisis public relations and breach of contract caused by negative news, and there is no such thing as real idols. Certain public relations risks; and, the IP of virtual idols can become the permanent assets of the company." Chen Jianwen said that in this model, the effect of the head IP is significant, but the development of the waist and tail IP is relatively difficult, so this kind of dependence The model of IP traffic monetization is niche, and more business models lie in the production of "accompanying products".
The supporters of virtual idols are mainly pan-two-dimensional users. With the gradual deepening of the two-dimensional culture, the number of pan-two-dimensional users in my country is increasing, especially in the Z generation (usually refers to the generation born in 1995-2009).
As the main target group for virtual idols, Gen Z is driving this market into the Red Sea.
"Real idols have limited energy, and most virtual idols can achieve the effect of '24-hour online companionship' through the alternation and replacement of 'people in the middle'. No matter who drives behind the screen, from the user's point of view, the front is always the same One image." Chen Jianwen said that as a new era crowd, Maslow's bottom-level needs of Generation Z have been met, and they are never tired of pursuing top-level needs. Derivatives wrapping the IP image are more like bringing a sense of belonging to them. And the spiritual food of companionship, and the online companionship of virtual idols at any time, just fills their needs.
The virtual idol market still needs strict supervision
With the advancement of 5G, AR, VR and other technologies, virtual idols will provide users with a better experience in applications such as live streaming, VR concerts and other scenarios; the maturity of virtual IP will also enhance the brand and virtual IP linkage.
In addition, enterprises can also commercialize virtual idols, and virtual idols can be used in more scenarios as virtual assistants, virtual teachers, virtual customer service, etc., to realize the diversification of landing scenarios and monetization paths.
With the continuous popularity of virtual idols, especially the vigorous development of Metaverse-related industries, a large amount of capital poured into the market.
The Metaverse has a large number of digital assets and requires asset certificates to facilitate the economic cycle of the Metaverse.
Non-Fungible Tokens (NFTs) are a manifestation of digital asset certificates in the Metaverse.
Some New Metaverse projects are creating virtual idols with NFT attributes to display on various digital media, and the value of NFT is linked to the popularity of idols.
However, since the market system is not yet perfect, domestic trading platforms, NFT project creators and other parties are still in the stage of cautious exploration.
"The industry of virtual idols is still in its infancy and development stage, and related technologies are still in the process of continuous breakthrough and maturity. Although the market size of virtual idols is small, the digital financial fraud and copyright disputes that people are worried about do not often arise. , but at the same time, the market supervision and regulation in this area is also weak." Chen Jianwen said.
In online live broadcast and film and television drama production, there are clear regulations on the hairstyle, dress and language of characters. The relevant rules and regulations and laws and regulations also have obvious constraints on the behavior of anchors and actors. However, there are regulations for virtual idols. with blanks and holes.
As a result, it will lead to virtual idols' behavior of "scratching the ball" outside the rules and regulations.
"For virtual idols, there is currently no specific code of conduct. In the long run, virtual idols may develop into a 'gray area'." Chen Jianwen believes that although virtual idols are virtual, they do not exist in a virtual environment, but survive In the real legal environment, it is necessary to formulate relevant laws, regulations and clauses for virtual idols as soon as possible, so that they can enter the track of standardized and healthy development.