Xinhua News Agency: Digital virtual people frequently go out of the circle, to what extent can they replace real people?

According to Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, January 12, 2019 Title: Enterprise employees, singers, anchors with goods... Digital virtual people frequently go out of the circle, to what extent can they replace real people?

Recently, an employee who won the 2021 Vanke Outstanding Newcomer Award "went out of the circle". The employee, "Cui Xiaopan", is not a real person, but a digital virtual employee.

Coincidentally, at the New Year's Eve party of Jiangsu Satellite TV, a virtual person based on Teresa Teng lijun sang with a real singer. In addition, shanghai SPDB's digital employee "Xiaopu", Tsinghua University's virtual student "Hua Zhibing", who can compose poems and music, Kuaishou's e-commerce virtual anchor "Guan Xiaofang", and the virtual person "AYAYI" who is active on social platforms... Digital virtual human applications ushered in a new wave of enthusiasm.

To what extent can virtual people replace real people? How much room for imagination is there for application scenarios? What ethical issues need to be paid attention to behind the hot technology?

Corporate employees, entertainment stars, anchors with goods... Digital virtual people appear in all walks of life

Quickly monitor the overdue situation and work abnormalities of various matters, send reminders to colleagues through email, and promote the timely handling of work... At Vanke, cui xiaopan, a digital virtual employee with a young female image, is responsible for these tasks.

Vanke said that "Cui Xiaopan" is a virtual character image rendered on the basis of artificial intelligence algorithms and relying on deep neural network technology, with the purpose of giving artificial intelligence algorithms an anthropomorphic identity and a more warm way of communication. Since joining the company in February 2021, with the continuous iteration of the algorithm, the work content of "Cui Xiaopan" has increased successively, from the initial reminder of invoice and payment recovery matters to the upload and management of business licenses and the maintenance of social security provident fund information for employees.

With the rise of the concept of metaversics, virtual people like "Cui Xiaopan" are appearing in the public eye more and more frequently.

Approaching the Spring Festival, some companies provide virtual character solutions that can provide services for start-ups that do live e-commerce. These virtual characters can broadcast various product details and work non-stop in the live broadcast room.

In the live broadcast room of "Kuaishou Xiaodian", the e-commerce virtual anchor "Guan Xiaofang" has completed many live broadcasts. "Guan Xiaofang" and the real anchor cooperate to complete the live broadcast with goods, Lianmai PK and other actions. Judging from the live broadcast performance, whether it is body movements, head movements, mouth shapes or micro-expressions, "Guan Xiaofang" is almost the same as real people.

At the New Year's Eve party of Jiangsu Satellite TV, the virtual person based on Teresa Teng and the live singer sang classic songs such as "Story of a Small Town" to let the audience feel the wonder of traveling through time and space.

Earlier, on October 31, 2021, virtual beauty artist "Liu Yexi" released the first video and appeared on the Internet hot search. So far, "Liu Yexi" has only released six videos on Douyin, and has more than 8.3 million fans and more than 20 million likes.

Shenyang, executive director of the New Media Research Center of the School of Journalism and Communication of Tsinghua University, said that virtual people can be roughly divided into three categories in terms of function and value: the first is the communication media category, such as virtual stars, idols, Internet celebrities and anchors; the second is the value of professional services, such as virtual experts, doctors, teachers, and employees; the third is the life companion category, such as virtual pets and relatives. Virtual people have a broad application space in media, entertainment, government affairs, medical care, education, finance, pension and other fields.

The "Virtual Digital Person Deep Industry Report" released by the qubit think tank of market research institutions predicts that by 2030, the overall market size of virtual people in China will reach 270 billion yuan, and the current virtual person industry is in the early stage of cultivation.

What is the impetus for this wave of development boom?

For a long time in the past, virtual people mainly focused on the image of animation and games, focusing on the film and television entertainment industry. The characteristic of this wave of development boom is that there has been a significant breakthrough in application scenarios. Virtual people can greatly improve work efficiency, solve the problem of standardization of work quality, and can more widely cover the service population.

According to Vanke statistics, since "joining", the response to the documents reminded by "Cui Xiaopan" has been 7 times that of the traditional IT system prompts, and the write-off rate of overdue documents due in advance that she has urged has reached 91.44%.

Shenyang said that in response to the demand for media scenes such as news broadcasts, game explanations, and TV guides, virtual anchors have fast generation speed and low production costs, and enterprises can improve content output efficiency, reduce labor production costs, and create differentiated brands with a more topical sense and attention.

Song Zhan, executive director of the Intelligent Design and Machine Vision Research Office of the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, believes that in recent years, technological breakthroughs such as artificial intelligence have made the production of virtual people simpler and more interactive, and the fineness of modeling and motion capture has been continuously improved, and it is more and more similar to real people in terms of form, expression and even sound.

Commercial value and capital power have become another reason for the rapid development of virtual people. The "Generation Z" group, with a size of about 250 million people, has become the backbone of China's Internet, and the consumption and aesthetic needs of this group directly affect the research and development and application of virtual people. The growth experience and environment of this group of people also makes them more accepting of virtual people.

At present, many Internet companies are accelerating their investment layout in the field of virtual people. The reporter inquired about the industrial and commercial information platform and found that NetEase Capital, a subsidiary of NetEase, has invested in virtual people from 2019 to 2021, with at least 4 in 2021 alone. Not long ago, Baidu released a digital human platform - Baidu Intelligent Yunxiling, which can provide a variety of digital human generation and content production services for all walks of life.

How far is the universal use of virtual people?

Industry insiders believe that the rise of virtual people reflects the general trend of virtual world and real world integration, although the intelligent level of virtual people is expected to be further improved in the future, but there is still a long way to achieve true integration.

At present, the business model behind the virtual person is not yet mature, and it is more of a curiosity, verification and attempt of new technologies and new formats. The reporter learned from Vanke that before the development of "Cui Xiaopan", there was no such a position within the company responsible for reminding and prompting the progress of the work, and the original intention of developing "Cui Xiaopan" was not to replace manpower, but more out of the exploration of the future work status of the enterprise.

Information from the Intelligent Design and Machine Vision Research Laboratory of the Shenzhen Institute of Advanced Technology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences shows that the technology for producing and training virtual people is not mature enough, especially the cost of 3D imaging equipment and post-production development remains high, and the modeling efficiency is relatively low. At the same time, the algorithm performance of virtual people needs to be further improved, especially the accuracy of real-time facial expression capture and restoration needs to be improved.

It should be noted that the ethical issues of virtual people have also aroused concern. Song Zhan said that the risk of "changing faces" brought about by the rapid development of artificial intelligence has once aroused people's vigilance, and the problem of fake substitution of virtual people to character prototypes may be more prominent.

The interviewed experts suggested that we should be wary of virtual people "feeding back" prejudice and malice to humans in the learning process. In addition, humans may reach a tipping point, that is, the time to interact with virtual people reaches or even exceeds the time of interaction with real people, and some people may be immersed in the virtual world, or find the main emotional support from virtual people, and may also cause a series of social problems. This requires us to update relevant humanities and social science research as soon as possible while tracking technology, so that social management, ethics and ethics can be coordinated with technological development.

Edited by Linzhi Sun