Core market size is expected to reach 48.06 billion yuan in 2025

AI talents why become the industry“sweet pastry”

In the recently held second Shanghai Rule of Law Culture Festival, AI talents popularized law has become a highlight. Many netizens said that in the AI digital man's preaching, the dry law became vivid.

The application of AI talents in the Shanghai Rule of Law Culture Festival is not an example. A few days ago, Beijing's first social security digital talents - Chao Bao Bao AI talents “on duty”, for residents to consult social security related matters to provide convenience. 2024 Zhongguancun Forum annual meeting, Jin Yong, academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and digital talents. “Qian Xuesen” cross-temporal dialog, attracting the attention of participants.

Data show that as early as the end of the 20th century, the beginning of the 21st century, the concept of digital talents has appeared. In recent years, with the progress of AI, virtual reality and other technologies, AI digital talent into the fast lane of development. The global new economy industry third-party data mining and analysis organization AiMedia Consulting recently released the “2024 China Virtual Digital Person Industry Development White Book”, which shows that in 2023, China's virtual person-driven industry market size and core market size were 333.47 billion yuan and 20.52 billion yuan, respectively, and are expected to reach 640.27 billion yuan and 48.06 billion yuan, respectively, in 2025, and the growth trend is Strong growth. Tencent, Ali, Jingdong and other companies have also entered the market, and the market competition around this field is becoming more and more intense.

So what are the new features of AI digital talent compared to the digital people that appeared before? What are the problems that need to be overcome for its development? With the above questions, the reporter interviewed industry experts and practitioners.

Interaction capability significantly enhanced

Digital people, digital characters created through digital technology similar to the human image. In recent years, under the support of AI technology, the intelligent interaction ability of digital people has been significantly enhanced.

Zhang Hongsheng, executive director of the School of Culture Industry Management of Communication University of China, introduced that the development of digital people has gone through three major forms from real people-driven to program-driven to AI-driven nowadays. Although the real person-driven digital person presents a virtual digital image in front of the user, it still needs a real person to support it at the level of language, movement, etc.; the program-driven digital person is based on the database language, and can only give mechanized answers; the AI-driven digital person is not only closer to the real human beings in terms of the natural language broadcasting, but also has a more powerful interactive capability.

Tencent cloud digital human product manager Liu Jing introduced, the company and CITIC Securities Co., Ltd. jointly created AI digital human - interactive digital intelligent employees, can be through the real person image information acquisition, motion capture, two-dimensional modeling and other technologies, highly restore the image of employees. It can not only support the work related to the account opening session in actual business scenarios, but also guide customers to understand the operation process, precautions, and even accurately solve the problems encountered by customers in the process of business handling, with strong interactivity.

Future production threshold will be further reduced

"The core technology of AI digital man covers a variety of fields such as computer graphics, motion capture, image rendering and so on. With the iterative updating of technology, AI Digital Man production effectiveness and intelligence level continues to improve." Liu Jing pointed out that under the support of AI big model, the production threshold of AI digital man is further reduced, and “self-service” production can be realized.

In addition, by importing exclusive knowledge, AI digital man can have a “super brain” that “knows everything”, providing more accurate, personalized and intimate interactive services for users from all walks of life.

In Liu Jing's view, an automated “AI+digital human factory” may be the future development direction. At present, Tencent Cloud can already efficiently and quickly complete high-volume AI digital person image and tone customization, and is also developing more AI digital person services for vertical industries and vertical scenes. In the future, a more professional, “out-of-the-box” AI digital person may become possible.

Based on the industry to enhance the level of intelligence

Zhang Hongsheng believes that many AI digital human products on the market are still in the experimental and experiential stage, and they are mainly to satisfy people's curiosity.

“Some AI digital people are in vain, and do not have the ability to solve problems independently and personalized thinking,and  poor quality of answers.” In Zhang Hongsheng's view, the application prospects of AI digital people are not limited to conversations with the public, and providing personalized services for users in deep industries is where their core value lies. This requires AI digital people not only to have a more three-dimensional image, but also to carry out in-depth training based on general and vertical large models to improve their problem-solving ability. To this end, a specialized industry corpus should be established to focus on the training of AI digital people. Zhang Hongsheng believes that the landing process of AI digital people depends on the progress of the development of AI technology with independent intellectual property rights in China.

Liu Jing said that AI digital people should be accelerated into real productivity to create greater value for the consumer market and enterprises. However, promoting the development of AI digital people not only relies on technology, but also requires standardized guidelines. In this regard, Zhang Hongsheng suggested that, one hand, it is necessary to comply with the laws of the market, and promote more AI digital man application scenarios to the ground by allocating resources with the market; on the other hand, the government, while introducing supportive and guiding policies, should also strengthen the research and supervision of AI ethics and morality, privacy data protection and other aspects.

“AI digital people can't completely replace people, and can only assist people in some of their work.” Zhang Hongsheng said that at present, AI digital people can perform some simple and repetitive work. In the future, with the progress of the big model, the AI digital person will develop in a more intelligent direction, and its application scope is also expected to be expanded.

Link to the layout of the digital human industry in many places across the country

With the accelerated development of interactive intelligence technology, digital people are moving from technological innovation to industrial application, and the layout is accelerating across the country.

In July 2022, Jiangsu Province Culture and Tourism Department and other 6 departments jointly issued the “Implementation Opinions on Promoting Cultural Industry Enabling Rural Revitalization”, which put forward to encourage conditional places to try to use virtual person endorsement to bring goods of local agricultural products and handicrafts.

In August 2022, the Beijing Municipal Bureau of Economy and Information Technology issued the first special support policy for the digital person industry in China - “Beijing Municipal Action Plan for Promoting the Innovative Development of the Digital Person Industry (2022-2025)”, proposing that by 2025, the scale of the digital person industry in Beijing will exceed 50 billion yuan.

In December 2022, the Shanghai Municipal Commission of Economy and Informatization and other 6 departments jointly issued the “Shanghai Action Plan for High-Quality Development of Fashion Consumer Goods Industry (2022-2025)”, which proposes to encourage enterprises in the digital field to develop virtual fashion, focusing on the development of digital boutique products, digital fashion, digital avatars, and other new fashions.

Relevant people called for the formation of more unified technical standards and norms for the digital human industry to ensure the healthy and orderly development of the industry.

Source: Science and Technology Daily