Editor's note: This article is based on the processing of the author Chen Lu (pseudonym) in his English report Digital Domain, creator of the Avengers virtual effect, explains how brands appeal to the Gen Z consumers by investing in virtual human.
Ask me how deep I love you, how much I love you?" The virtual man wearing a blue cheongsam made Teresa Teng and her songs seem to come alive again with his gentle and sweet singing voice and agile expression.
combines game engine and artificial intelligence technology. The producer behind the virtual man Teresa Teng is the digital kingdom - a technology company born in Hollywood, USA, and then Chinese-funded Poly Culture and CITIC invested in.
"The outbreak of the epidemic has boosted the popularity of virtual economy such as short videos and online games. Under this influence, people's life and entertainment patterns have quietly changed. Virtual people have arrived on the eve of the industry's outbreak. I think virtual people have huge commercial value and consumption potential in application scenarios such as short videos, advertising, games, and education. Xie An, CEO of Digital Kingdom, told Pinwan reporters in an exclusive interview.
From Hatsune and Luo Tianyi to hold a concert on B station, beauty expert Liu Yexi attracted millions of fans on Douyin , and then to Alibaba Dongdong in Beijing accent to bring goods in Taobao live broadcast room. Virtual people have entered the lives of the people, interacting with everyone on online platforms such as Douyin, Tmall , Taobao, etc. to fully demonstrate their commercial value.
Why are there more and more virtual images born? One reason behind this is that is different from the demand for practicality of the people in the previous era, emotional sustenance and identity are the core demands of the new generation of consumers . For merchants, how to reach the new generation of consumer demand has become the core of future strategy, but the traditional brand promotion model has gradually failed to attract consumers in the era. The spiritual consumer products derived from new technologies and new cultures have gradually led the market, and virtual people have gradually become an important link connecting brands and young people.
Secondly, in the past 2021, celebrity house collapse incidents have emerged one after another, and related negative news has never stopped. In the Z era, under the influence of the two-dimensional culture, the definition of idols has become increasingly harsh. Obviously, the sense of gap brought by collapsed houses and is even more unacceptable to them.
Celebrities "collapsed houses", and their brands suffer. In order to hedge against the financial losses caused by "collapse of houses", many companies and brands have set their sights on virtual idols and used "them" to replace disqualified artists.
"Recently in our business cooperation, more and more brands have expressed dissatisfaction with the sky-high endorsement fees of celebrities, because these high investments cannot bring corresponding sales figures to growth. On the contrary, if a celebrity becomes a bad artist, this will have a huge impact on small and medium-sized merchants. Internet celebrity economy, brand endorsement is an important focus of our virtual person business. Now more and more companies are looking for us to create a suitable brand image for us. The virtual person can reduce the dependence on celebrity endorsements and help them reduce their publicity budget, Xie An explained.
From the perspective of the merchant, virtual anchors can not only achieve 24-hour live broadcasts, but also supplement the unbroadcast period of live anchors, but brands can also use virtual characters to create an IP image that conforms to the brand's tone. Compared to spending a lot of effort to endorse the top anchors, the "character collapse" of virtual characters is less risky and more controllable. Virtual idols are more willing to It means a kind of stability of business cooperation, and brand institutions can fully have the management rights of their accounts.
As early as 2013, Digital Kingdom used virtual people to combine AI technology to create a chorus between Teresa Teng and Jay Chou on Dome . As Digital Kingdom becomes more and more familiar with virtual people and artificial intelligence technologies, Digital Kingdom continues to customize and create an IP virtual person image that conforms to the brand tone for more and more companies. The company's announcement shows that the brands currently cooperated with by Digital Kingdom include: BMW , NFL, Times Weekly and other . Among them, BMW BMW invited Digital Kingdom CEO Xie An and its virtual person Elbor to star in the new generation of BMW 5 series advertising film.Through the combination of virtual people, the popular trendsetter, BMW strives to further deepen the brand image of BMW Auto young, sports, cutting-edge technology, and vivid and textured like users.
"Now, most virtual people on the market prefer the two-dimensional style of games or animation, while the virtual people in the Digital Kingdom focus on making the audience unable to distinguish them. The entire skin details completely reach the photo-level realism, and at the same time have anthropomorphic emotions," Xie An said in an exclusive interview.
In order to make virtual people more anthropomorphic, Digital Kingdom and Alibaba Damo Academy jointly cooperated with the intelligent virtual anchor project to output the digital kingdom’s virtual people three-dimensional modeling and visual effect technology, and at the same time combined with Damo Academy ’s artificial intelligence system.
In the domestic market, last year, the virtual person Nonoka, the team leader Xiao Ai, under the Digital Kingdom, cooperated with Wanglaoji to launch a live broadcast of the "Super Ji New Year's Goods Special" blind boxed new products, creating an atmosphere of real virtual interaction, bringing huge traffic to brands, and thus driving the sales of Wanglaoji's new products. Afterwards, the squad leader Xiao Ai participated in the ninth episode of the sixth episode of CCTV's classic poetry program "Chinese Poetry Conference" and interacted with contestants and mentors on the spot.
" In the future, from municipal services to individual consumer ends, every industry will set up virtual labor to represent the brand to improve sales conversion rate. Users' interactive experience in the reality and the virtual world will be the top priority for enterprises to win in the future . "'Xie Anti said.
In addition to short videos and internet celebrity artist economy, the commercial potential of the combination of virtual people and games is also huge. Brands such as Burberry, Gucci, Nike, Adidashml3, and technology platforms led by Facebook have made a series of attempts around virtual people, virtual items, etc., such as Adidas in the blockchain open world game The Sandbox Purchase 144 pieces of virtual land to build a virtual store for tourists to visit, Fortnite holds virtual concerts for celebrities, Nike sells digital sneakers and linked physical products to consumers by acquiring RTFKT, a virtual sneaker manufacturer,
. " Whether it is through VR ( virtual reality ) or AR ( augmented reality ), the game can have virtual human stand-in for players, especially this virtual person has high enough AI to simulate human behavior in the game, and the game is fun and confrontational. The game company is very willing to spend money to do this. "
Xie An explained in an exclusive interview.
In fact, the third-person shooting competitive game "Fortnite" has begun to apply virtual people in the game. Fortnite has been successively Snoop Dogg, Ariana Grande, Travis Scott and other famous musicians held dozens of virtual concerts of all sizes.
In China, Tencent Music launched China's first virtual music carnival TMELAND on New Year's Eve in 2022, attracting bands such as Mayday to "hold" virtual performances in "TMELAND".
Take Travis Scott as an example. His virtual concert attracted more than 45 million views, and the number of live online users was as high as 12.3 million.
In this psychedelic electronic cyberpunk style concert, Travis Scott's virtual image - dark skin, ostentatious tattoos, gold necklaces, tights, accompanied by singing, sometimes traveling between space, sometimes diving into the sea, interacting with players at close range, fully mobilizing the audience's sense of participation.
"The epidemic has brought a lot of inconvenience to many artists. Few artists are willing to go abroad to perform to avoid the risks of isolation and infection. Virtual people combined with artificial intelligence technology can prevent them from having to perform live, and at the same time expand more possibilities for commercial monetization." Xie An explained.
"We think virtual people also have great business opportunities in education, which is what we have been actively planning. What are the obstacles for children in language learning? They are afraid to speak and are shy. If the teaching assistant you are facing today is virtual people, such as Elsa in Frozen, he dares to say anything." Xie An preached.
is based on artificial intelligence, highly anthropomorphic virtual human:
Digital Kingdom was born in Los Angeles, USA in 1993. Its founder was to direct Titanic, Avatar's Hollywood famous director James Cameron and his team. In the early days, Digital Kingdom focused on providing visual effects services for high-budget films, including a series of box office masterpieces such as "Titanic", " Transformers " series, "Avengers 3: Infinity War", Lord of the Rings' First song: The Lord of the Rings' Appearance", "Rejuvenation", "Avengers 4: Endgame", and "Player No. 1".
In China, the Digital Kingdom has also provided visual effects technology for many popular movies such as " Evil Is Not Suppressing the Righteous ", "The Richest Tomatoes", " My Parents and Me ".
For a time, Digital Kingdom became the second largest visual effects company in the world. Outstanding financial data and successful listing have made the company's management ambitions expand, and then Digital Kingdom expanded into many fields such as film production, entertainment content investment, news media, etc.
Due to the serious competition in the Hollywood visual effects industry - low-price competition in the inverse volume often occurs, and the excessively rapid multi-field expansion has put the digital kingdom on a heavy financial burden, the company finally declared bankruptcy around 2012. The company then underwent a series of bankruptcy and reorganizations, and Chinese capital took over this unlucky Hollywood visual effects company in 2013. It was from then on that time that Xie An, who had an investment banking background, took over the company.
According to public information, Poly Culture Group and China CITIC now hold 13.02% and 10.66% of Digital Kingdom shares, respectively.
Due to years of accumulation in the visual effects industry, the digital kingdom naturally entered the field of virtual people. As early as the end of 2013, Digital Kingdom used virtual human technology to create a chorus between Teresa Teng and Jay Chou at the Dome, but at that time the company's virtual technology was still stuck in the field of visual effects and did not combine it with game engines and AI technology too much.
"In fact, as early as 2008, the company began to lay out virtual people, and there were some prototypes. It was also from that time that the digital kingdom began to transform from a traditional visual effects company to a technology company. The transformation of the virtual people business started in 2018. We began to vigorously develop and focus on combining virtual people technology with game engines and AI technology. Before 2018, we felt very lonely. What is the reason for loneliness? At that time, people rarely were willing to think about it. To develop virtual people, because virtual people are thankless. For example, some film and television special effects companies focus on explosion scenes, while some focus on space themes, while we choose to do face special effects. Human face is the most thankless because the audience is very strict with the details of human faces, and facial technology needs to be piled up the most. For example, in the movie "Rejuvenation", we implanted virtual people technology into actor Brad Pitt , making the whole person younger more vivid. "Xie An said.
"The biggest problem before was that only film companies could afford us, because Hollywood film companies , such as Disney , Warner , and Paramount did special effects at any cost.
But before 2018, it was difficult for you to find a new business model. The R&D investment cost was too high, and it was difficult to achieve immediate results in the short term. The metaverse has come out in the past two years, especially the movie "The Number One Player" has provided everyone with some business ideas, and more and more companies have begun to explore the application scenarios of virtual people." Xie An explained.
When the virtual light comes into reality:
In 2018, the virtual space "oasis" presented in the movie "The No. 1 Player" provides people with a vision for the metaverse. Since then, business leaders tech practitioners have never stopped discussing the metaverse. With the continuous outbreak of the new crown epidemic, people's entertainment and social interaction methods have shifted from offline to online, and virtual economy such as short videos and online games have become the biggest beneficiaries.Under the influence of this trend, a virtual world game called Roblox (Roblox) quickly became a new way of socializing in North America. The new generation was surprised to find that not only could they socialize through this game, but they could also make money by establishing their own exclusive IPs, such as virtual territory, houses, items, and then trading. In China, Tencent is the exclusive agent of Roblox, but due to the introduction of the version, domestic players cannot experience the authentic game experience.
After this, Facebook changed its name to Meta, focusing on the research and development of the metaverse; Microsoft 's conference and video call software Team plans to add virtual avatars and immersive experiences to remote meetings in the future. At the same time, Microsoft acquired gaming giant Activision Blizzard for US$68.7 billion as a future strategy - strengthening entertainment content, and then developing mixed reality technology and virtual immersive experience.
in the country, ByteDance spent a huge amount of money to acquire VR equipment manufacturer Pico to create its own virtual reality technology. For a time, the metaverse once again became the center of the topic, and virtual people were considered an integral part of it.
Imagine that at some point in the future, you can create different versions of digital clones, and these substitutes can do some things on your behalf, make money for you, bring goods for you online, and resonate with you in a certain degree.
gives an example to illustrate that a virtual person named Lil Miquela appears online in the form of a 19-year-old mixed-race girl. She is set as a virtual model and musician with cute freckles, long-established settlement in Los Angeles, with Hispanic, Brazilian and American descent.
Watch the updates she posted on social media, it is difficult for you to tell that this is a person who does not exist in real life. Her personal life is very rich, and she has not missed any of them in socializing, shooting, advertising endorsements, etc., and her influence is comparable to that of a real-life internet celebrity.
"In recent interviews, I was reluctant to use the word metaverse to explain business innovation. Indeed, compared to many companies, we are the one that is closer to the "oasis" vision. We have VR, we have virtual people, we have game engines, and it just so happens that the movie "The Number One Player" is also used to do visual effects technology. But now you can hear which technology company says that we are doing Internet entrepreneurship and innovation. The current metaverse is a big concept, just like the early Internet." Xie An explained.
The meta-universe is widely regarded as a new form of the next generation of the Internet. It is a combination of various underlying technologies, such as next-generation image engines, advanced virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), cloud computing and data storage, and faster network transmission speeds than 5G. At present, the concept of virtual in reality is more applied to games, such as Roblox, the Sandbox, and Fortnite mentioned above. Nintendo 's Pokemon go ( Pokemon Go) also applies this concept. Through augmented reality technology, players can walk around in real scenes to capture the elves in the game world and interact with other players through collecting exchange elves.
"We have independent research and development of AI, image engines, machine learning technology, and entertainment content. We have integrated these materials together to create today's series of virtual human IPs. If you don't advance, you will retreat. This sentence is very applicable in the technology industry. We will continue to develop virtual human-related technologies, cooperate with company brands in various fields to create virtual human IPs that meet the brand tone for them." Xie An said.
