China's Virtual People Industry Booms as Companies Digitize Employees

In China's entertainment sector, virtual persons, or digital humans who can perform and engage in live streaming, are gaining popularity. With uses in broadcasting, entertainment, commerce, banking, and education, the virtual human market in China is poised for enormous growth. According to a report,  tech company Baidu has claimed that the number of virtual persons projects it has worked on for clients has doubled in the previous year, with costs ranging from $2,800 to $14,300 each year. The cost to create a three-dimensional virtual person has decreased by almost 80% in the past year, according to the same report, and currently costs roughly 100,000 yuan ($14,300) per year, compared to 20,000 yuan for a two-dimensional virtual person. [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="1280"] Image credit- Jing Daily[/caption]

A Growing Sector

Companies in China are looking into other ways to monetize virtual people following the boom of virtual money and real estate. These virtual individuals, which combine animation, sound technology, and machine learning, are sweeping Chinese cyberspace despite sceptics. For January 2023, games on Top Steam are discounted by up to 90%. Civilization VI, Total War: Warhammer III, and More Li Shiyan, the executive in charge of Baidu's robotics and virtual people businesses, anticipates a 50% annual growth rate for this sector through 2025. While the country's five-year plan, launched last year, called for increasing digitalization of the economy, including in virtual and augmented reality, Beijing City declared intentions to establish an industry worth over 50 billion yuan by 2025. Numerous Chinese tech firms are already working on products for the virtual human market. When the team behind virtual vocalist Luo Tianyi was acquired by video and gaming streaming service Bilibili, it became one of the pioneers in popularising virtual persons. [caption id="" align="aligncenter" width="677"] Image credit- McKinsey[/caption] This year, the developers concentrated on employing an artificial intelligence system to enhance the voice texture of the synthetic singer. Luo Tianyi, who debuted in 2012, has close to 3 million followers and this year even performed at the Winter Olympics opening ceremony in Beijing. Additionally, Bilibili has a large number of virtual anchors or personas who use cutting-edge technologies to connect with their audience. According to the reports, Tencent's Next Studios has created a virtual sign language interpreter and singer, while Tencent Cloud AI Digital Humans offers chatbots for industries like financial services and tourism to give automated customer support. The global digital human market is expected to reach $527.58 billion in 2030, with a compound annual growth rate of 46.4 percent, according to latest global market research.

Human Workforce Threat

In a National Bureau of Economic Research paper released back in December, Osea Giuntella of the University of Pittsburgh, Yi Lu of Tsinghua University, and Tianyi Wang of the University of Toronto concluded that "exposure to robots had negative effects on employment, leading to some workers to drop out of the labour force and increasing unemployment." The workforce failed to "adapt" to the significant changes brought on by robotics, according to the economists' analysis of the effects of industrial robots on the Chinese labour market using data from more than 15,000 families. According to reports, Chinese labourers have not always benefited from the development of robots. In an effort to increase automation, Foxconn, Apple's primary iPhone manufacturer, eliminated approximately 400,000 human jobs between 2012 and 2016.