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"she is supposed to be a capable finance director in her 30s, and her appearance is generated from the inside out. She actually exists more in the mailbox or in the OA system within the company. What is different is that the person we interact with this time has become an AI Beings."

Li Di, CEO of Xiaobing, described Cui Xiaopan, a virtual AI character, in an interview with the media in January, when she had officially become Vanke's first digital employee.

At the same time, the byte jump investment virtual human Li Weike became the first investment on the virtual human track at the beginning of 2022. At that time, Hangzhou Li Weike Co., Ltd., to which IP Li Weike belonged, was established only half a year ago.

Compared with the popularization of the concept of meta-universe, the current development of virtual human is obviously more in full swing, and even many institutions in the industry predict that many professions may be replaced by virtual human in the future. According to public data, the size of China's virtual digital human market is expected to reach 270 billion yuan in 2030, of which the proportion of identity virtual human market is expected to reach 2%.

In fact, virtual human has been used more widely in 2022, and "TA" has been used in many directions, such as virtual idol, virtual anchor, enterprise IP, virtual employee and so on. New business type continues to derive, not only in the virtual human combined with cutting-edge artificial intelligence technology, strong image plasticity, but also closely related to the entry of many players.

A large number of players join "Man-making" in 2022, the "Man-making" market is more clearly divided into three types of mainstream players-Internet companies, short video platforms, and virtual human operation companies. They focus on ecological construction, commercial platform building, and IP design.

Big factories tend to lay out the whole ecology around meta-universe and build or invest in virtual people. Such as byte jump, in addition to holding virtual women's group A-SOUL and virtual human Li Weike, it has also acquired VR enterprise Pico, game company pupil, and launched social products Pixsoul, party island, and cobbled together the "meta-universe suite" of virtual human, hardware, games, and social interaction.

At the same time, virtual people in large factories are also "working" for business scenes. Dong Dong, the famous Alibaba virtual human at this year's Beijing Winter Olympic Games, works as a "host broadcast" in his capacity as a promotor of the Winter Olympic Games to help Tmall's Olympic flagship store promote Olympic licensed goods; and the virtual characters launched by Baidu, Lin Kai and Ye Youyou, serve as the images of "warm-hearted" brothers and sisters, chatting with netizens and "falling in love" in the Baidu input method.

More virtual people have also begun to emerge on short video platforms this year. It is mentioned in the 2022 report on the Commercialization of Virtual Digital Human published by Communication University Of China that four major platforms for the commercialization of virtual digital human have been formed in China: Douyin, Kuaishou, Weibo and bilibili (hereinafter referred to as "bilibili"). In the short video platform, virtual human has formed a live reward, e-commerce with goods, short video advertising, brand endorsements, offline activities and other ways of realization.

But as the virtual human race track becomes more and more popular, the competition of virtual anchors is also intensifying. According to public data, bilibili had more than 36000 virtual anchors as of August last year, but more than half of them had zero monthly income.

Enterprises run by virtual people are not easy either. Lucky companies seek investment and commercial cash by creating "idol IP", such as AYAY, a virtual human in wheat-burning technology, where Alibaba has partnered with 20 brands in less than six months; A-SOUL, a virtual women's group owned by Lehua, has won a large amount of investment because of its rapid popularity; and Liu Yexi, who became popular last year, has cooperated with more than 200 brands so far.

But unlucky companies may have to "hide in the dust". Not every virtual human will be popular, just as not every anchorman can become a "boss with goods".

Virtual people are constantly "growing up" the "birth" of a large number of virtual people, which not only intensifies the business competition, but also "promotes the maturity" of the market and ecology.

In 2022, the virtual human is not only not out of the tide, the market scale is still growing. According to the Suitu Yuan Universe Research Institute, the virtual human market grew by 64.5% in 2022 compared with the same period last year, reaching the peak growth rate in nearly three years.

The fast-growing virtual human track also reflects a more positive trend in terms of capital and market awareness. As of September 2022, there have been 22 financing related to virtual human, including not only top capitalists such as Sequoia Capital China, Softbank Corp. Group, IDG Capital, ZhenFund, but also byte Jump, Ali Pictures, NetEase Capital, Xiaomi and other enterprises to invest in this field.

At the same time, people's attention to virtual human is also increasing. According to data from iMedia Consulting, Chinese netizens' attention to virtual human has risen from 63.6% in 2021 to 87.8% in 2022. Its analysts believe that the diversified development of social media has promoted the promotion of virtual people and increased the penetration of "them" among netizens, while the emergence of virtual idols has also released the commercial value of the industry and attracted users to consume.

At the same time, the application of virtual human in brand marketing and social service is becoming more and more diverse. Generally speaking, virtual human can be divided into identity type and service type. The former tends to be used in the field of entertainment, such as virtual idols, virtual anchors, etc., while the latter provides services in specific scenes to replace many social roles, such as employees, hosts, customer service and so on.

Identity virtual human is invited by more and more enterprises to help brands to carry out marketing. For example, Keep launched "A-SOUL exclusive Sports Planet" at the beginning of the year, inviting five women's group members to stay as members of dynamic Star push officials; taking some time to sign virtual idol "Ah Xi" as the brand's "Virtual spokesperson of the year 2022"; popular virtual idols such as Liu Yexi, Ling Ling, Shiga and other popular virtual idols have also unlocked the endorsements of many brands.

It is worth mentioning that the virtual human Ling Ling, jointly created by Mofa Technology and second-generation culture, worked with Qiu Jirong, the fourth generation descendant of the Qiu School of Beijing Opera, to perform an ice and snow blockbuster "Beijing Rhyme Winter Olympics" at this year's Winter Olympics. in addition, this year also gave birth to the Dunhuang Flying Goddess as the model of the virtual human Tianyu, as well as the first cultural and cultural promotion official Wen Jiaojiao and other virtual people based on the Chinese style. Compared with well-known virtual human singers and virtual human models such as the United States, Britain and Japan, "they" also reflects the value of Chinese virtual human creation in cultural communication.

The "maturity" of virtual human still needs time. At present, the "Generation Z" group of about 260 million people has become the backbone of the Internet in China. They have consumption habits for new things, as well as personalized aesthetic needs. They live in an era that accelerates the research and development and application of virtual human.

In this market prospect, many practitioners are full of confidence in the virtual human. Dr. Guo Cheng, founder of STEPVR and CEO, said, "Virtual human is not only a creative industry that meets spiritual needs, but also a productivity tool for the public. With the empowerment of this tool, everyone can shine grass-roots brilliance in the meta-universe and become an online celebrity in a certain field. There is also a huge growth dividend in this field. The closer you are to people's thinking, the stronger your willingness to pay."

But it is undeniable that, from the perspective of the public, the development of virtual idols may be more like the exchange of capital for a lower-risk and more operable money tool; at the same time, how to achieve real maturity in the future? how to really fully integrate into society there are still many challenges.

The first challenge is cost. Liu Yexi costs as much as one million yuan to make a film, 2 million yuan to make a virtual idol song, and 20 million yuan to make a holographic virtual concert. All kinds of data reflect the high cost of making virtual human. Although most virtual idols are backed by capital giants, such a money-burning model will also cause many companies with high barriers to entry and difficult business closed-loop problems.

At the same time, the revenue composition of virtual human is also relatively simple. Its main revenue is still concentrated in brand cooperation and live broadcast reward, but at present, only the virtual anchors in the head can receive endorsements or advertisements, and the commercial promotion of many virtual anchors TOB is still very little. With the incubation of a large number of virtual people, the rarity of virtual idols will be diluted, and because the coverage of virtual idols is limited, the competition in popular fields such as brand endorsements, dance, music and so on will continue to increase.

Another issue that deserves more market attention should be the content creation ability of virtual human IP. For example, recently, the meta-universe development research report released by the meta-universe culture laboratory of the School of Journalism and Communication of Tsinghua University pointed out that the market should produce valuable virtual digital human, create a personified and storytelling virtual human IP, make the virtual human full of "life" of the story core, derive the virtual human "protagonist halo" in the hearts of users, and give the virtual human special personality charm.

Shenyang, a professor at the School of Journalism and Communication at Tsinghua University and director of the Yuan Universe Culture Laboratory, further suggested that "the appearance and expression of the virtual digital human, to the content and the environment of the virtual digital human, as well as a series of plots that interact with the environment, should be carried out around their cultural people and have stable values," which is obviously difficult to achieve in the current market environment.

"slow release" believes that some phenomena that the virtual human industry is "criticized" for relying on people and substandard technical capabilities can be improved with technological breakthroughs and industry standardization. However, in order to make the virtual human really integrate into human society, it is necessary to have more perfect commercial value, content value, cultural value and so on, so that capital and audience are more willing to pay the bill.

Conclusion: in 2022, more and more AI Beings have entered the society. "TA" have brought beautiful images, novel experiences and low-cost services, but due to the lack of personal characteristics of these virtual people, they have not been able to completely shake the hearts of the public. Accordingly, Microsoft, Nvidia, Baidu and many other technology companies began to invest in the research and development of virtual life platform, committed to enable people to achieve their own virtual human customization through a piece of software.

I believe that in the near future, everyone's vision of having a virtual human will be realized, and it will be just around the corner for virtual human to integrate into human society and become another new type of labor force. As an industry CEO said, "let people return to human value" is the purpose of the existence of virtual people.

Reference:

The future of ①, AI, robot and virtual human will accelerate into the workplace and usher in a new decade of development.

② forward-looking Industrial Research Institute? analysis on the present situation and Development trend of China's Virtual Human Industry Market in 2022

③ Tencent News-new chain? Internet companies compete for 100 billion virtual human market: create virtual human IP, invest in cutting-edge enterprises

④ thepaper.cn-China's well-off network? bilibili's live broadcast earned more than one million virtual anchors in 2 hours?

⑤ 36 Krypton-Leibao: since 2022, there have been 22 investment and financing events in the field of virtual human, with companies raising hundreds of millions of yuan.

⑥ Ai Media Consulting? report on in-depth Research and Investment value Analysis of China's Virtual Human Industry in 2022-2023

⑦ China Securities Network (2022) Virtual Digital Human commercialization Development report released to capture large market space

⑧ Global Network, virtual human carrying Chinese culture, going out to sea in Yuan Universe

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: ID:manfangsd, author: Xi Xi, Editor: Dahan

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