Digital humans, humans represented in digital format who can perform and interact in live streaming, are becoming increasingly popular in the Chinese entertainment world. The creation of these virtual figures is experiencing exponential growth in many sectors: television, gaming, commercial, financial and educational.
Hire an employee who doesn't exist
The data from Baidu (a technological giant which, so to speak, has recently received the green light for the deployment of autonomous taxis in Chinese airports) speaks clearly. The number of projects involving digital humans in interacting with customers has doubled in just one year! These services have prices ranging from 2.800 to around 14.300 euros per year: and they are decreasing, another sign that is a prelude to widespread diffusion.
According to what was declared in the same report, in fact, the cost to create a three-dimensional virtual person has dropped by around 80% over the last year. A two-dimensional virtual person costs a fifth of this amount. Li Shiyan, head of Baidu's virtual people and robotics department, predicts that at this pace the virtual people industry will grow by 50% per year until 2025, driving greater digitalisation of the economy, including virtual and augmented reality. All objectives contained in the latest plan presented at the XX Congress of the Chinese Communist Party.
Please note: According to a recent market research, the global digital human market is projected to reach USD 527,58 billion in 2030, with a compound annual growth rate of 46,4%. In short, it seems that the future is increasingly digital and virtual.
From tourism to entertainment
As mentioned, there are several technological companies that are advancing in the field of digital humans. bilibili, a well-known video and game streaming app, was one of the first to introduce virtual people into the mainstream, acquiring the team that had developed the famous virtual singer Luo Tianyi. This year, the developers worked hard to make Luo's voice even more realistic. If it seems strange to you, get used to it quickly: Luo Tianyi celebrates 15 years of career this year, she wasn't born yesterday: she has reached almost 3 million fans and was even invited to sing at the opening ceremony of Beijing Winter Olympics. In the video below, she performs in front of a packed arena in 2019.
Bilibili, however, is not the only Chinese company to experiment with digital humans. Next Studios has developed virtual singers and songs (some incredibly successful) and a sign language interpreter, always virtual. Moreover, Tencent Cloud AI Digital Humans instead provides chatbots for sectors such as financial services and tourism: solutions that automate customer support.
Digital humans are ok, but real “humans”?
The alarm is real. “The growing diffusion of robots has generated negative effects on employment, causing some to abandon the workforce and increasing the unemployment rate,” they say Hosea Giuntella (University of Pittsburgh), Yi Lu (Tsinghua University) and Tianyi Wang (University of Toronto) in a report published by the National Bureau of Economic Research in December (here it is).
Economists analyzed data from more than 15.000 households to assess the impact of these technologies on the Chinese labor market, and found that the workforce is struggling to "adapt" to these changes. And not from today. Let's take the example of Foxconn, the main iPhone assembly company: between 2012 and 2016 it replaced over 400.000 jobs with robots.
Someone will remind me that at Foxconn the pace forced workers to sleep on site and work 20 hours a day, and suicides were rampant. It is true. I raise my hands. In these cases, automation is welcome if it saves human lives and removes people from degrading jobs: but we must then provide an alternative, and accompany those who leave certain patterns towards more rewarding commitments.
Real human matters.
