AI is the first to liberate the productivity of emotional consultation

In the general concept, the difference between humans and machines is whether they have emotions or not. However, nowadays, AI, which we think is cold, has become an emotional consultant and has been sought after by people. Let's take a look at what is going on.

"I was six months pregnant, and my husband and his ex-wife took their child out to play. The three of them only booked a standard room. My husband said nothing happened, but I still felt very upset. I had a big fight with him and complained at home, which made my mother-in-law so angry that she was hospitalized. My husband scolded me, blocked me, and didn't go home for more than half a month. He didn't send me living expenses. What should I do?"

This is a real hot post that I saw on a social media. When I asked people working in the emotional field about it, I got three answers.

The psychologist said, "There is no way to answer this. I need to know more details, such as why her husband and ex-wife divorced, how old her child is now, what her daily life pattern is like... Only by finding the reasons at a deeper level can we give the most professional advice possible."

The internet celebrity relationship mentor said, "The principles of any relationship have a price tag. She is still asking what to do, which means she has not decided to end the marriage completely. It is best to let go of emotions, seize the opportunity, and maximize her own interests. As for how to maximize the interests, we will provide a one-on-one running service and develop a detailed plan."

The emotional anchor said, "Sister, communication is very important in this situation. You should first manage your emotions well, don't collapse easily, first understand your husband's motives and stance, and learn a female emotional counterattack course such as "Green Tea Offense and Defense" to complete the reconstruction of the dangerous relationship."

In fact, the third answer did not come from a real human practitioner, but from AI. The emotional anchor just read it out loud, playing the role of a "real person" placebo.

Li Si (pseudonym), who is responsible for incubating emotional anchors, told Hard Candy that the AI ​​trained by his team can not only answer specific emotional questions, but also skillfully write related courses, such as the "Green Tea Attack and Defense" mentioned above. "We just used AI to write a book called "Charm Enhancement Technique" in less than half a month, and it can be even faster in the future." "Charm Enhancement Technique" has sold more than 3,000 orders in the live broadcast room, with a revenue of about 150,000.

One question, three answers, a rough outline of today's emotional content ecosystem. Psychological therapy is one of the few hot industries at the moment, and after psychological counselors and emotional mentors have taken the lead, emotional anchors are rising in all aspects, exploring a new path of "scale" between professionalism and traffic.

Especially with the help of AI, the creative capacity of emotional anchors has grown by leaps and bounds, and the industry has become a grand spectacle in the blink of an eye - after all, there are really not many new professions like this.

1. Emotional anchors, a huge demand in the cracks

When it comes to love, the topic often focuses on a few top internet celebrities. Ayawawa, Snow Queen, and Ququ Big Woman have all been popular at certain times, and so far, a competitive landscape of "no king meets no king" has emerged, adapting to the emotional needs of different groups.

The services provided by these internet celebrity tutors are basically similar, usually one-on-one customized content. The average customer price of related courses is relatively high, often several thousand or even tens of thousands. They often attract users in first- and second-tier cities with a strong sense of payment, so they can still earn considerable income if they go it alone.

However, Li Si also found that these Internet celebrity mentors rely heavily on their personal influence. Even the top assistants they bring out are not well-known and have relatively weak monetization capabilities. "Clients spend so much money to get guidance from experts, so they definitely want to enjoy the highest-end services. The apprenticeship model is unlikely to work for them."

This has created a clear gap between supply and demand. In Li Si's view, modern people generally like to use excess energy to pursue so-called emotional value, especially the popularity of live broadcasts and short videos, which have enabled many people to turn real life into a dramatic performance . While they continue to experience relationship anxiety in the Internet world, they also participate in creating more relationship anxiety.

"They lack the ability to truly love. If you shake those love-brains and sex-brains, all that comes out are love strategies and emotional hot posts." For consumers in first- and second-tier cities who are trapped in love, spending thousands of dollars to buy the services of online celebrity emotional mentors may just be a drop in the bucket. But for the infatuated men and women in lower-tier cities, this is a huge expense.

"They have a lot of emotional problems. They are even too idle, so they have more time to act out chaotic love scenes than urban workers. They have no money, so they can only choose more economical services," Li Si analyzed. This is the key to the rise of downgraded consumption of emotional content.

A large number of institutions focusing on incubating emotional anchors have emerged, delivering low-priced content and services to the sinking market, and making a lot of money by selling in large quantities. As competition becomes increasingly fierce, popular emotional courses emerge in an endless stream, and these teams have to speed up the pace of updating content and turn to AI to release production capacity.

Real-life scenarios also require them to seek help from AI. Emotional anchors mainly gain traffic by answering questions with users via live broadcast, which is quite a test of their ability to respond on the spot. In addition, practitioners are of varying quality, and jams and dull moments in live broadcasts can easily lower the conversion rate of fans. The relevant team has trained AI to handle a large number of emotional issues, allowing it to serve as an "assistant broadcaster" for emotional anchors, which can significantly reduce the number of rollovers.

In Li Si's opinion, AI can be more deeply involved in emotional services. " AI can handle all creative content, and the anchor is only responsible for content sales. In the past, it took three to five years to become an online celebrity emotional mentor, but now anyone can be an emotional anchor. AI can also update and adjust the theoretical system in a timely manner to solve users' current anxiety, and the business scenarios have also increased."

2. How to “feed” an emotional course

Don't worry, most of the emotional courses that are widely circulated on the Internet are from real emotional instructors. For example, "Golden Relationship" and "Disconnection Theory". Internet celebrities such as Ququ Big Woman and Snow Queen have been deeply involved in the emotional field for a long time, serving a large number of users and having enough analysis samples, so they have sorted out a set of theories and formed their own school.

Emotional anchors take the route of content downgrading, and the courses they create are obviously rough, but they win in terms of efficiency. Their traditional way of writing courses is simple and crude: usually they first search the entire Internet for hot topics, classify the corresponding content into categories, such as cheating, making money, disconnection, workplace, etc.; then they look for popular mentors and Internet celebrity mentors in vertical tracks, and combine some classic theories to "wash" out new courses.

As for live broadcasts, the team also looked for cases on social media such as Douban Groups and Xiaohongshu, focusing on finding highly controversial and extensible topics, and then brought over the sharp opinions in the comment area and applied them to the Q&A process. "The joys and sorrows of human beings are actually the same. People who are cheated on suffer the same pain, but the specific demands are different. Responsibly speaking, emotional services are basically the same, and it is very common for you to copy me and I to copy you." Li Si concluded.

This creative method is extremely low-cost. The preliminary work can be done by interns who are quick-witted and have a good sense of the Internet. The difficulty is nothing more than organizing it into a systematic course. After the emotional anchor track became popular, all companies frantically accelerated the speed of writing courses, and some people can release new courses every month. In addition, most emotional courses have no copyright protection. After being sold online for a period of time, they will be all over the network disk, and the price can be as low as thirty or fifty yuan. This means that they have to frequently optimize the content to provide users with more new perspectives and learning experiences.

In terms of speed, AI is definitely better than ordinary people. At the beginning of last year, Li Si's team began to try to use AI to write courses and even hired employees to train the model.

"The first course was about the 'Law of Attraction'. Because the model did not form its thinking ability, the content produced was very general, just a pile of theories and materials, which needed to be refined by the copywriting team. We later added a lot of psychology books and popular emotional courses. Now the effect is much better, and it can be put on the shelves for sale after a little polishing. The main reason is that the price is low enough, so users will not have too high expectations. Many people will probably only read the beginning after buying it ."

The trickier part is how to train AI to become an emotional anchor. Compared to the Internet celebrity mentors who have at least been selected through the test of time, the mass-produced emotional anchors are mostly laymen and unskilled. They may have been working from nine to five the day before, but suddenly became experts and companions who have been deeply involved in the emotional field for many years.

According to Li Si, emotional anchors don't have much time to grow up, and it only takes three days to incubate one. "On the first day, we interview and look at the personal image and expression ability, and make a preliminary screening. In the next two days, we will officially go live and arrange for staff to connect with the microphone to practice and find the feeling. If they still can't adapt in half a month, we will most likely not sign them."

Live broadcasting is highly uncertain, and the live broadcast may encounter various strange questions, and the anchor can easily be led astray. In order to improve work efficiency, Li Si's team specially invited an artificial intelligence trainer to adjust the model behind the scenes, constantly ask questions to the system, perform text extraction and prompt word annotation, so that the AI ​​can be repeatedly trained, absorbed, and learned, and slowly be able to answer various emotional questions and provide guidance and reference for the anchor.

"The creative model is not mature enough, but it can already provide obvious auxiliary value, and it will definitely evolve in the future. But a good trainer costs tens of thousands of yuan, and it is best to pair him with a professional psychologist, so that we can complement each other's strengths and weaknesses ." Li Si paused for a moment and added, "But you must not find students who take artificial intelligence online courses, they are too watered down."

They are in the same industry, so of course he knows how weak the other person is.

3. Sales is the core competitiveness

No matter how smart the production is, it also serves the purpose of sales. Emotional anchors are a high-volume business. For companies that incubate emotional anchors, creating courses is not the most difficult part, but sales is.

This still tests the ability of the real anchor. Li Si said that at this stage, there are two main popular personality types for emotional anchors - warm-hearted handsome men and mature female protagonists, targeting different types of users, "they need to be 'handsome men' and 'mature women' that the sinking market likes."

The handsomeness of a warm-hearted handsome guy is not about his amazing appearance or attractive figure, but about his friendly atmosphere. I carefully observed some typical representatives. Their looks are barely good-looking, and their clothes and temperament are even a bit rustic, with the charm of a spirited young man from my hometown. However, they have become the arsonists of the hearts of middle-aged women in the live broadcast room by calling them "my good sister".

In Li Si's team, the male anchor with the best performance was a car salesman in the town. He accumulated some fans in mature social products, and later transformed into an online chat companion. After a detour, he entered the emotional service track. This male anchor is characterized by being sharp-tongued and caring. He is good at scolding the sister who is connected to the microphone in the live broadcast room, and then said with tears that he was "heartbroken and couldn't help it."

This type of male anchor can provide emotional value to fans, and is suitable for launching emotional courses on redemption and repair, guiding customers to cultivate high emotional intelligence. "Old sisters have a very empty life. They are old, and they don't really expect to become green tea or vixen. They buy courses purely for psychological comfort. If they make people happy, the transaction volume will go up." Li Si said.

In my opinion, the live broadcast scripts of mature female protagonists are more exciting. The mature age here cannot be too mature, generally around 35 years old. This type of anchor is essentially following the route of a cunning mature woman, but it is nothing more than changing from hanging out with big men to making money to coaxing husbands to spend money, and from improving self-worth to cultivating personal charm, making "upward socialization" more feasible.

According to Li Si, anchors who are well-off are particularly popular. "They have a little money, but they live in the mainstream order. They are not the kind of independent women who need to be looked up to. They can make the sinking market feel more involved."

Regardless of the type of emotional anchor, live streaming is always the main way to attract fans. This means that they must act seriously with users during live streaming, guide them to buy relevant courses, and complete the final harvest and conversion. Emotional anchors basically have no basic salary, and rely entirely on commissions from selling courses. "A course priced at 199 yuan will earn you nearly 100 yuan, and it is no problem to buy 300 to 500 copies in one session. The daily income can exceed 10,000 yuan, and the monthly salary can be more than 100,000 yuan if you work hard." Li Si introduced.

Under sales pressure, emotional anchors will explore some operating skills, such as community maintenance, group purchase promotion, etc. In some live broadcast rooms, three or five cheated sisters/brothers can form a group and buy a redemption course (written by AI) at a historically low price, and the group leader can enjoy a 10% discount.

Friends who are interested, quickly call your lovelorn friends and enjoy this era where AI teaches you how to fall in love! By the way, wouldn’t the author who wrote “QQ Love” consider writing another song called “AI Love”?

Author: Liu Xiaotu; Editor: Li Chunhui

Source: WeChat public account "Entertainment Hard Candy (ID: yuleyingtang)"