In China, 2,700 euros a year are enough to hire a digital human
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They are model employees: they don’t protest, they don’t start labor disputes and they don’t ask for overtime. In China, where the market is already developed and promises to grow rapidly, that’s enough 2,700 euros a year to hire one in the “basic” version. They are the digital humansavatars created through the union of animation, advanced acoustic technologies and artificial intelligence: they can talk, sing or interact with users live stream or in chats. In China, where they are already an established reality, they are liked by financial service companies, tourist boards, but also by the state media which use them more and more often.
The thrust of the Chinese government
In the People’s Republic the phenomenon of digital humans is rapidly gaining ground. The tech giant Baidu has been offering this type of service for some years now, a sort of virtual temp agency. Over the past year, the number of requests for the provision of “virtual people” has doubled, while prices have fallen. Digital humans in two dimensions are the ones that cost the least, while for three-dimensional interactive avatars the prices go up and can reach 100,000 yuan a year, around 14,000 Euros.
The success of the market in China is largely due to boost coming from the governmentas has already happened in the past with other technology investment directives.
Beijing, in particular, aims to become one of the world capitals of the “digital human” market. The capital announced a few months ago a plan for the development of the sector which aims to generate a turnover of around 50 billion Yuan (almost 7 billion dollars) by 2025.
The ultimate goal is favor the creation of one or two large companies that can dominate the sector of digital humans in the years to come. Globally, the virtual human market was already worth 10 billion dollars in 2020 and according to Emergen Research estimates, the global turnover could exceed 500 billion in 2030.
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It’s not hard to see why the Beijing government might appreciate it development of easily controllable, addressable virtual humansi, and functional to the country’s magnificent and progressive fortunes.
These are motivations not too far from those of companies (not only Chinese), which like virtual humans for the same reasons, above all if employed as brand ambassadors or more generally as content generators for social networks. Unlike “real” humans, in fact, avatars generated by artificial intelligence do not stumble into scandals of various kinds, nor do they get caught evading taxes.
BiliBili and Tencent
Net of phenomena such as the virtual singer Luo Tianyi, whose development team was acquired by the streaming app Bilibili, it is not the superstars that move the market but the tens of thousands of virtual personalities who can have their own personality or act as a digital avatar of an existing person.
As the Senior Vice President of Tencent, Steven Ma, which in July last year entrusted an entire conference to its digital double. The avatar was developed by the company’s Next Studios division, which has already developed its own virtual singer as well a digital sports commentator, Yu Linwhich offers its commentary for the deaf using sign language.
Virtual humans in the West
Digital humans, as they are gaining ground in China, should therefore not be confused with virtual influencers, who are a phenomenon already known in the West but are in fact only a subgroup of Chinese-style “digital humans”.
“Here with us virtual influencers they are still popular, but they cannot be considered ‘virtual people’ yet”, he explains Fabrizio Perronefounder of influencer marketing agency Buzzoole.
“These are mostly post-production characters, but what they cannot live stream or participate in events. Companies are increasingly understanding that they have to preside over the intersection between physical and digital, and that the strategies to do so cannot be trivially applied to social media: it is the brand itself that must become a creator. Virtual ‘human brands’ are an opportunity in this sense”.
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In the West and in particular in Italy the demand is still lowif only because the use of virtual characters so advanced in the promotional arena, in addition to being costly, requires a series of non-trivial decision-making steps on the part of brands. The e-sports and gaming agency 2Watch, co-founded by Perrone, is working on an advanced solution that will go in this direction, simplifying the process. “Thanks to advanced motion capture technologies, the 5G connection and artificial intelligence, our offer will allow brands to give consistency to their virtual offer, even for live or streaming events”.
If the Italian and European market is still far from the Chinese glories, the advent of increasingly advanced and complex artificial intelligence solutions will make market growth is inevitable of digital humans also in the West.
“We are experiencing a new golden moment of Artificial Intelligence, but unlike in the past, today we are seeing concrete results”, concludes Perrone. “We are still talking about futuristic perspectives, but thanks to AI we will soon be able to achieve results that are still unthinkable. For example, with CGI characters who interact live, without the need for a real actor and behind-the-scenes motion capture”.
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