As AI creations become increasingly popular and digital humans and virtual anchors emerge, how can guilds and organizations keep up with the trend?

The development of the AI ​​industry has penetrated into many industries at an unpredictable speed. Live streaming, artistic creation, and even the music industry have all received unprecedented attention. How should we view this trend? Should we avoid risks or seize the opportunity? This article provides some references for you.

On May 12, #The first person to lose her job after the emergence of AI was Stefanie Sun# became a hot topic.

This is because a user on Bilibili used AI technology to create AI Stefanie Sun, who has thousands of videos of herself covering various classic songs, and her voice is almost comparable to that of a real person. Her covers of "Rainy Days" and "Hair Like Snow" have received over one million hits.

How popular is AI? It can be seen that AI is now widely used in various fields. In the field of short video live broadcast, there are "24-hour non-stop" e-commerce live broadcast rooms, short video content that uses AI to drive 2D digital people instead of real people, and entertainment virtual anchors that are unparalleled...

Under the AI ​​trend, many institutions and anchors are accelerating their entry.

01 AI creation is hot, digital people are popular

“Congratulations on the order.”

At the end of April, Taobao’s official Weibo account posted a message to celebrate the first sale of a new store, LumiWink. This non-famous or high-end store attracted Taobao’s attention purely by being a hot topic.

It is understood that LumiWink is the first AI Taobao store created by the media with the help of artificial intelligence software such as ChatGPT. This is a relatively popular case of AI application in e-commerce, content creation and other tracks since ChatGTP became popular in China.

In fact, the application of AI technology in the field of e-commerce has attracted the most attention and discussion in the digital human e-commerce live broadcast room, where many AI-driven 2D real-life virtual anchors, or "unmanned live broadcasts," have appeared.

However, AI technology has entered the e-commerce field not only after ChatGTP became popular.

As early as 2021, when the concept of the metaverse became popular, virtual scenes, virtual digital humans and other applications related to the metaverse were highly sought after in the e-commerce industry. In 2022, the leading institution Yaowang Technology created a digital human model for its talent @Yu Dagongzi, and also moved the digital human to the live broadcast room for PK with the real person.

In addition to the leading institutions, many businesses and small and medium-sized e-commerce institutions have also set up digital human live broadcast rooms. For example, in the live broadcast rooms of some Taobao merchants earlier, there were 3D cartoon-style virtual anchors on duty 24 hours a day. In the local life live broadcast track that has emerged in the past 1-2 years, the live broadcast rooms of hotels, theme parks, cultural and tourism tickets, etc. have introduced 2D real-life digital human anchors.

The image of virtual anchors has evolved from cartoons to real people, thanks to the maturity of the technology of 2D real digital humans that can be created from a photo or a video. It also makes virtual anchors closer to users and has a richer range of applicable scenarios.

On the one hand, brands are putting their digital assets into practical use; on the other hand, this type of virtual anchor with lower long-term operating costs can replace human anchors and build a 24-hour live broadcast room, which can not only complete the platform's live broadcast time task, but also obtain scattered natural traffic in different time periods.

For example, in a live broadcast room, they started using digital human anchors from 10 pm to 6 am the next day. In 8 hours, nearly 30,000 viewers flocked to the live broadcast room.

At the same time, virtual anchors have characteristics such as adjustable employment schedules at any time, and can accept and execute unified and standardized instructions, which greatly empowers the company's management capabilities. In addition, the IP effect of some top anchors being transformed into digital people and the novel form of virtual anchors at present have a certain drainage effect, so many top e-commerce organizations and anchors have invested in the construction and application of virtual images.

Financial writer Wu Xiaobo also said bluntly in his New Year's Eve speech: In 2023, every company may need a digital person, who can be used for local life, customer service, brand live broadcasts, short videos, etc.

The actual situation is indeed like this. 2D digital humans have indeed been widely used in long and short video shooting, as well as video course recording. For example, Liu Run, a well-known domestic business consultant, clearly marked in many videos on his homepage that some of the content was produced using AI technology, that is, virtual images were used instead of real people for shooting.

“When it comes to short videos and video courses, they need an image to efficiently produce content.”

Miloxing Group, which started to lay out the Metaverse track in 2021, has established a team focusing on the research and development of virtual live broadcast and digital human overall solutions - Shangou. Its relevant person in charge also said that in the application scenarios of virtual images, not only live broadcast, but video shooting and recording is also a high-demand scenario.

02 Platforms are increasing their investment in virtual live broadcasts

The application of AI technology in the field of e-commerce live broadcasting is mainly based on AI-driven 2D digital humans. In the field of entertainment live broadcasting, a new content track has been formed - virtual live broadcasting.

In 2021, the hyper-realistic 3D virtual person Liu Yexi caused heated discussions. The number of views of her first video exceeded 80 million, she gained over 100,000 followers within 6 hours of being online, and over 4 million followers within a week of being online.

The person in charge of Shan Gou said that virtual images like Liu Yexi are very difficult and costly to produce, and the investment for live broadcasting is also very large. Therefore, the ultra-simulated 3D digital human at that time was mainly used in scenarios such as government digital assets, digital anchors of TV media, and digital customer service of banks.

Nowadays, the most popular and widely used form in the entire virtual live broadcast track is the 3D virtual anchor driven by the person inside, such as Hu Lili, Xu Anyi, Jinju 2049, etc. These anchors have impressive growth data and considerable revenue.

For example, the recent head case is Ling Yanhuan, a hyper-realistic virtual anchor who went online at the beginning of this year. Within a week of her debut, her number of fans exceeded 600,000, and the number of video views on the entire network exceeded 100 million. In the first broadcast on February 22, the number of live viewers exceeded 1.527 million, with 15.285 million likes and an increase of 120,000 fans.

After coming into contact with these top virtual anchors, Xinbochang learned that virtual live broadcast content has been one of the key contents supported by major live broadcast platforms in the past 1-2 years.

Douyin not only supports virtual anchors in terms of traffic, but also gives them preferential treatment in terms of profit-sharing policy. "The basic points for virtual anchors are 50%+10%. The policy is relatively simple and crude. All you need to do is to complete the assessment of the length and number of days of live broadcasting," said an industry insider close to Douyin live broadcasting.

On the other hand, Kuaishou is also increasing its investment in the virtual live broadcast track. According to the platform's latest guild policy document, under Kuaishou's basic guild policy, new anchors in the virtual track can get up to 88% of the share ratio, and existing anchors can get up to 75% of the share ratio. At the same time, entertainment live broadcast platforms such as YY and Inke are also supporting virtual live broadcasts.

With the market improving, the emergence of leading cases, and the support of platforms, the entire virtual live broadcast market is becoming more and more popular. According to iMedia Research data, the number of newly registered virtual anchor companies in China reached 948 in 2022, with a growth rate of 86%.

This set of data also sends a signal to the outside world: the virtual live broadcast track is still in an incremental market. Compared with the very inward-looking live entertainment broadcast, not only is the competition relatively smaller, but there are also more opportunities.

For small and medium-sized guilds that have content planning and operation capabilities and a certain scale of turnover, but are at a bottleneck in growth and development, virtual live streaming will inevitably be a good choice.

Shan Gou, for example, has served some such institutions. After the relevant live broadcast rooms were launched, they achieved good cash flow performance in the first month.

Based on the development cases of several virtual entertainment anchors such as Mi Jiajia and Yi Ran launched by Shangou on KK Live, the relevant person in charge of Shangou said that at this stage, for guilds that want to enter the market, they can choose the form of half-body live broadcast. This not only meets most of the scene requirements of virtual live broadcast, but also has relatively low investment costs and entry barriers. For example, the hardware end can complete half-body motion capture and face capture operations through a single camera or iPhone.

"The 3D-style virtual image will have better user retention and payment effects." Shan Gou has also accumulated rich operational experience in virtual anchor images and gave their suggestions.

03 How do guilds and institutions keep up with the trend?

According to iMedia Information data, the market size and core market size of China's virtual human-driven industry 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, showing a strong growth trend.

"At present, the entire (virtual live broadcast) industry chain has broad prospects, clear and mature division of labor, and there are areas worth deepening and exploring in the upstream, midstream and downstream." said the person in charge of Shan Gou.

From the above cases, we can see that there are many players in the virtual anchor track. At the same time, there are also many entertainment live broadcast guilds in the industry that are actively making plans.

For short video live broadcast practitioners, investing in the application of virtual images is not only to keep up with the pace of content upgrade and innovation, but also an important layout in digital assets. For their own interests, the most direct benefit is to replace real people, produce video content, and broadcast live without people, thereby reducing costs and increasing efficiency.

"Everyone here is responsible for the popularity of the Metaverse. The live streaming industry is becoming more and more inward-looking, leading to the mysterious self-confidence of anchors. Take Tik Tok as an example. Now the minimum amount of anchors signed to guilds is basically in the unit of 'ten thousand'." said a guild operator.

The operator's complaints also directly reflect the dilemma of rising labor costs in the short video and live broadcast industries.

"If a guild or institution invests in digital human development or technology construction, the cycle and cost will be very high." The person in charge of Shan Gou said that compared with the long-term investment of millions or several years in the top cases, small and medium-sized institutions can completely choose virtual live broadcast service providers on the market and purchase plans on an annual basis, and the cost is not very high.

Take Shangou as an example. Their 2D digital human + unmanned live broadcast solution includes the ultra-fast broadcast package, a service package that includes personalized image customization and personalized voice customization, with a minimum fee of less than 20,000 yuan per year.

Although it will take a certain period of time to verify cost reduction and efficiency improvement, in the entertainment live streaming track, the application of virtual images is the most effective project that can directly generate profits in the short term.

According to the current policies of major live broadcast platforms, guilds can not only get a higher share of the profits by deploying virtual anchors, but also have a much greater overall advantage than real-life entertainment live broadcasts in terms of task assessments, such as most basic assessments such as starting a broadcast and increasing fans.

At the same time, the layout of virtual anchors can also allow real-life entertainment anchors with poor appearance, poor photogenic effects, and poor face exposure to fully utilize their live broadcast capabilities outside the camera with the help of their identities, which also greatly expands the richness of the guild's anchor recruitment.

Therefore, for small and medium-sized guilds with content capabilities, as long as they find a virtual live broadcast service provider team with reasonable costs and mature technology, they can quickly reap the current wave of policy dividends, which is undoubtedly the best opportunity to enter the market.

"Normally, anchors sit still. But if conditions permit, we still recommend configuring better hardware and software equipment to make the virtual scene richer, or to allow anchors to have more props in the live broadcast room, so that there will be more diverse gameplay."

When talking about how small and medium-sized guilds choose virtual live broadcast service providers, the person in charge of Shan Gou said that in addition to considering the cost-effectiveness of the solution, they should also consider the possibility of subsequent upgrades. Judging from the virtual anchors and guild service cases currently launched by Shan Gou, competition in the track is also gradually intensifying. Some small upgrades and changes can often achieve good results and surpass competitors.

Currently, Shangou has a series of businesses including virtual human production, virtual content production, and virtual human operation.

It is understood that the Miluoxing Group behind Shangou has started to develop its own virtual live broadcast and digital human solutions since 2021. Relying on the group's own application advantages, it conducts research from the asset and driver ends. While integrating existing mature solutions on the market, it has also established its own technical team to overcome cost thresholds and achieve better adaptation to application scenarios.

Not only that, the person in charge of Shan Gou also said that judging from the technical teams in the entire market they have come into contact with, as well as various application customers in the short video live broadcast industry, the application of virtual images is moving from high-end to low-end, and virtual image services with annual fees of tens of thousands are gradually becoming popular, but at the same time, they are also mixed.

As the market prospers and grows rapidly, the pie will be divided into smaller and smaller pieces. It is crucial for industry organizations and associations to seize the existing opportunities.

Author: Aligu

Source: WeChat public account "New Broadcasting Field"