Beautiful internet celebrity has a "clone", can you video chat with her for 30 yuan?

AI technology is constantly rising. AI technology can not only change faces, but also enable face-to-face video chats. This article explains the current status of AI chats, and I hope it will be helpful to you.

Oh my god, humans can no longer stop the speed of AI evolution. While some people are still worried about the legal and ethical issues behind "AI Stefanie Sun's cover of Jay Chou" and "AI face-changing Yang Mi's live streaming of goods", companies that have smelled business opportunities have begun to create digital clones of celebrities and Internet celebrities. We are not unfamiliar with this company. It is Beijing Hongmian Xiaobing Technology Co., Ltd., which once created the artificial intelligence chat robot "Xiaobing". The first clone prototype launched by it is also the well-known Internet celebrity "Hanzang Forest".

Weibo treats beautiful Internet celebrities as "virtual girlfriends" and allows face-to-face video chats with idols. These things that exist in ordinary people's fantasies seem to be possible. The cost is only 30 yuan per month.

1. Internet celebrity “clones” earn millions in a year without doing anything?

On June 1, the internet celebrity "Han Zang Sen Lin" with 2.62 million followers on Weibo announced that she had signed up to create the world's first batch of digital clones. She said that as a science fiction fan, she kowtowed to the comic book "Blade Runner" at home after receiving the official news.

▲Image source: Hanzang Forest

As early as May, XiaoIce announced the launch of the "GPT Clone Plan", where celebrities, experts and scholars can create their own clones and provide them to the audience for a fee or free of charge. It is said that the total number of fans of online celebrities who have signed up has exceeded 500 million, but because it is still in internal testing, considering safety issues, the official first batch of clones is only 300, and only a new celebrity will be launched on the APP "X Eva" every Thursday. The clones of "Han Zang Forest" are the pioneers.

▲Image source: Hanzang Forest

On June 2, I downloaded and registered the APP "X Eva". When I entered the platform, I found that there were not only "Hanzang Forest", but also "Gai Xie Jian Tao Jun", "Ma Xing Bot", "Kun Kun" and other clones created by netizens. This is a function in the APP, which can clone yourself or others. The way is to complete personal information and personality, enter the real person's Weibo account link, and generate the clone's personality. Finally, select the voice color, and you can clone yourself who can chat with yourself.

▲Image source: APP “X Eva”

But in comparison, the "Ban Zang Forest" clone is closer to real-life interaction, but it requires "money power". In addition to free chat, if you want to view related friend circles and get voice replies, you need to spend 42 ice flowers (6 yuan)/month to upgrade to emotional mode. In addition, spending 210 ice flowers (30 yuan)/month can also unlock the super mode, allowing "Ban Zang Forest" to become a work assistant, helping you write copy and provide inspiration, etc., and you can also make video calls anytime and anywhere.

▲Image source: APP “X Eva”

Some netizens have calculated that if there are 10,000 users who unlock the "Han Zang Forest" clones in emotional mode, their annual income will be 720,000 yuan. If they are super mode paying users, their annual income will be as high as 3.6 million yuan. But this data seems too conservative. According to official data, as of June 2, the "Han Zang Forest" clones have had 300,000 conversations with users. Due to the influx of too many users on the platform, the APP once crashed.

2. Will clones also follow the “black and red” route?

"It's really hard to understand how someone who knows nothing can be promoted like this." In the passionate discussion around digital cloning, the questioning of XiaoIce's choice to cooperate with "Ban Zang Forest" was not drowned out. When it first became popular on the Internet, "Ban Zang Forest" was regarded as the "originator of pure desire style". A photo of her with her bare back and Nike sneakers in her hands attracted countless straight men.

▲Image source: Hanzang Forest

Weibo It was not until 2019 that "Ban Zang Forest" admitted in the emotional dispute between the internet celebrity Aqin and her boyfriend Liu Yang that "I knew you had not broken up but I still chose to continue to interfere in your relationship." As a result, the reputation of "Ban Zang Forest" plummeted, and "Knowing the third is the third" became the biggest memory point of netizens about her. Nearly four years have passed, and it is clear that her black history has not been washed away. Moral flaws may be the reason why Xiaobing Company chose to cooperate, and put the "Ban Zang Forest" clone first in her debut to attract attention.

▲Image source: Hanzang Forest

Weibo is just like what Liu Qingyun said when he won the 41st Academy Award for Best Actor: "Whether it's applause or booing, I accept it. It's better than silence." This is even more true for brand marketing. Xiaoice CEO Li Di also frankly stated why the first batch of 300 clones were mainly focused on influential people. "Don't mention anything else, just talk about Internet celebrities. There are 1 million big Internet celebrities in China, and the number of fans of Internet celebrities in 2018 was 600 million. This is a huge market."

As for "Hanzang Forest", she not only has a huge fan base of millions, but also has the topic heat generated by her own controversy, all of which make XiaoIce's efforts in the field of digital cloning not unknown. XiaoIce is no stranger to using topic figures to attract marketing traffic. In 2014, XiaoIce was still Microsoft's biological daughter. At the XiaoIce birth conference, "Milk Tea Sister", who was an intern product manager at Microsoft, made the final appearance. And just a month and a half before that, the media exposed Zhang Zetian and Liu Qiangdong's relationship.

▲Image source: E-commerce online

With the help of "Milk Tea Sister", the 100,000 XiaoIce accounts originally planned for the 7-day public beta were snapped up in just one day, and the server was overloaded and crashed. However, XiaoIce is now using the same old trick again. Although it has gained popularity, the criticism it has attracted has become a "double-edged sword". In the APP "X Eva", the "Hanzang Forest" clone, which was online for less than a week, has now been removed from the shelves, perhaps because of netizens' boycott of bad Internet celebrities.

3. The “Virtual Human” that was Played Badly

" According to the 2023 China Virtual Human Industry Development and Business Trends Research Report released by iiMedia Research, the market size of the industry driven by virtual humans and the core market size in China will be 186.61 billion yuan and 12.08 billion yuan respectively in 2022, and are expected to reach 640.27 billion yuan and 48.06 billion yuan respectively in 2025. Faced with a huge market worth hundreds of billions of yuan, it is not difficult to understand why XiaoIce chose to use controversial Internet celebrities to open up the market and seize the initiative.

After all, there are already quite a few players in the market. For example, XiaoIce has used the influence of celebrities and Internet celebrities to attract attention. This practice has precedents both at home and abroad. Previously, 23-year-old American Internet celebrity Caryn Marjorie worked with a technology company to develop an AI version of herself. Fans only need to spend $1 per minute to chat with Caryn AI.

▲Image source: E-commerce online

In China, many celebrities have their own virtual avatars, such as Dilraba Dilmurat's virtual image "Dilraba", Huang Zitao's virtual image "Taosiman", Cai Ming's virtual image "Nanako", etc. Among them, Yi Yangqianxi's virtual image "Qian Miao" and Gong Jun's digital human "Jifeng" have become spokespersons for Tmall and Baidu respectively. However, due to the maturity of technology, there are very few virtual humans in China that can have extreme realism, and they are almost ruined.

It is understood that the underlying technologies used in the XEva APP include the XiaoIce XLLM language model, sound and neural network rendering technology, etc., which enable the clones to have both personality and the ability to complete work. Although it seems to be an advanced version, the "Hanzang Forest" clones still fail to meet people's rich imagination of digital virtual people. Not to mention that during video calls, the clones' expressions are slightly stiff. Not only can they simply open their mouths and blink, but their overall movements and expressions are half a beat slower, and they are not as good as the AI ​​anchors who live broadcast and sell goods.

▲Image source: APP “X Eva”

Just relying on daily chats on ChatGPT, the "Hanzang Forest" clone always behaves like an artificial retard. For example, many netizens complained that the clone's replies were more like Baidu, and the voice was just clumsily reading the ChatGPT content in the voice of "Hanzang Forest". When it comes to psychological and emotional issues, the clone's answers are as great and glorious as textbooks, very formulaic, or she simply admits "I am an AI assistant" to cover up the embarrassment of not being able to answer questions.

Even due to incomplete imported data, "Ban Zang Forest" would make common sense mistakes. For example, she mistook Xu Sanduo for a character in "Bright Sword".

▲Image source: E-commerce online

In short, XiaoIce hopes to bring people clones that can communicate, provide emotional companionship, and assist in work. But the bad experience brought by the "Ban Zang Forest" clone poured cold water on it. She seems to tell people: Do you want to have a virtual boyfriend/girlfriend who can care about you and provide emotional value? Or wait a little longer! But I think this day is not far away.

Author: Su Ziqiu, WeChat public account: Internet Brand Official