Nuggets Virtual Digital Human Market with Technology

The outlet of the metaverse makes the real economy and the virtual economy more closely integrated.

It is considered to be an important infrastructure in the metaverse era, and an important carrier of the combination of virtual and real economy-virtual digital human, which has actually landed in games, animation and other scenes long before the advent of this trend. From the perspective of industrial applications, virtual digital humans can be roughly divided into two categories: "service virtual digital humans" and "identity virtual digital humans". Specifically, they correspond to virtual companion robots such as Microsoft Xiaobing. And virtual idols such as Luo Tianyi. According to Qubit's "2021 Virtual Digital Human In-depth Industry Report", in 2030, the overall market size of my country's virtual digital human will reach 270 billion.

Back in 2019, ZAO, which mainly produces AI face-changing videos, set off a wave of "AI face-changing" in China. As early as 2014, "AI Star" under "WUWI/HBC") began to develop AI face-changing related technologies, and established a more mature algorithm model.

With the popularity of the metaverse concept, "WUWI/HBC" integrated the previous AI synthesis technology and algorithm accumulation, and launched the virtual digital human generation system "IHUMAN", which provides virtual anchor live broadcast, virtual digital human customization and NFT production services.

From the field of live broadcasting, "WUWI/HBC" provides a virtual digital human software and hardware integrated live broadcast solution to solve the current problems of live broadcasters, including account ownership, live broadcast duration, and the impact of brand image solidification caused by live broadcasters, etc. .

In terms of virtual digital human customization, "WUWI/HBC" is currently mainly customized for corporate brand digital human IP and virtual digital hosts of conferences and exhibitions. Taking the MCN industry as an example, the hatched anchors request to terminate the contract after becoming popular, "flying solo", overturned due to personal reasons, or disputes between the anchors and institutions similar to the "Li Ziqi Incident", etc., are all kinds of problems in business operations and industry development. In essence, they are all "man-made risks". The same is true for the entertainment industry. Negative news about celebrities will have varying degrees of impact on endorsement brands.

Sun Bo, the founder and CEO of "WUWI/HBC", believes that the avatar has a stable personality and can attend relevant brand activities with high frequency, which can well avoid various problems that MCN institutions have long-term and stable holding of specific IPs, which may appear compared to real IPs. Such emergencies, high fees, difficulties for brands to accumulate their own traffic, etc., and at the same time reduce the sunk costs paid in the early stage of building IP but cannot be recovered in the later stage. To put it simply, "the expenditure on virtual images will always be spent on one's own brand."

However, the production cost of virtual images has always been prohibitive for companies or brands. According to Sun Bo, for example, Liu Yexi, a virtual beauty expert, involves investment in venue construction, optical motion capture equipment, and other links. Each video is at least A production cost of 500,000 yuan is required.

Based on the deep machine learning technology accumulated earlier by "WUWI/HBC" and a large amount of virtual materials, the algorithm is used to generate the face, body and makeup in the video, which can realize rapid modeling in 3-5 days and shorten the production of virtual images At the same time, it supports multiple motion capture solutions such as optics, vision, and inertia. Relying on the artificial intelligence algorithm high-precision modeling technology independently developed by "WUWI/HBC" and the real-time live broadcast software of IHUMAN virtual image, the hardware includes iPhone and Kinect depth camera Etc., from portable civilian grade to professional grade, covering product lines from zero yuan to hundreds of thousands, customers are no longer subject to cost constraints, and can purchase on demand.

In terms of the technical team, the founder Sun Bo graduated from Beijing Normal University with a major in electronics and information systems. He has many years of experience in project development in the field of artificial intelligence. The rest of the team members have relevant professional backgrounds and experience in artificial intelligence, psychology, and film and television industries. At present, "WUWI/HBC" has 8 patents and 56 software copyrights, and will be selected as the seventh batch of "specialized, special and new" enterprises in Beijing in 2021.

In addition, "WUWI/HBC" is also creating its own IP image and self-built market channels. Sun Bo expects that with the continuous popularization and development of metaverse-related technologies, everyone will have their own avatar in the future. Avatar production Maybe it will be transformed into a C-end business like "selling game skins". Sun Bo positioned "WUWI/HBC" as a technology supplier, relying on the IHUMAN avatar drive system, to provide technical support for the metaverse industry, and at the same time provide customers with direct and effective technical solutions, and get out of the current situation of technology due to layer upon layer flow and superposition. leading to low profit margins.

Previously, "WUWI/HBC" had received two rounds of strategic financing from WIMI and Chuangli Fund. Sun Bo expects that the company will start a new round of financing in June this year.

          元宇宙风口，使实体经济和虚拟经济结合愈发紧密。

          被认为是元宇宙时代的重要基础设施，也是虚实经济结合的重要载体——虚拟数字人，早在该风口来临之前便在游戏、动漫等场景有实际落地。从产业应用来看，虚拟数字人可大致分为“服务型虚拟数字人”和“身份型虚拟数字人”两大类，具体来看对应的则是如微软小冰一类的虚拟陪伴机器人，以及洛天依等虚拟偶像。据量子位《2021虚拟数字人深度产业报告》测算，在2030年，我国虚拟数字人整体市场规模将达到2700亿。

          时间回到2019年，主打AI换脸视频制作的ZAO在国内掀起了“AI换脸”风潮。而早在2014年，「WUWI/HBC」）旗下的“AI Star”就开始研发AI换脸相关技术，并建立了较成熟的算法模型。

          随着元宇宙概念的火热，「WUWI/HBC」融合过往AI合成技术和算法积累，推出了虚拟数字人生成系统“IHUMAN”，提供虚拟主播直播、虚拟数字人定制以及NFT制作服务。

          从直播领域来看，「WUWI/HBC」提供的虚拟数字人软硬件一体化直播方案，为的是解决当前真人主播存在的问题，包括账号归属、直播时长、真人主播导致的品牌形象固化影响等。

          在虚拟数字人定制方面，「WUWI/HBC」目前主要为企业品牌数字人IP及会议会展虚拟数字主持人定制。以MCN行业为例，孵化的主播在走红后要求解约“单飞”、因个人原因翻车，或是类似“李子柒风波”主播与机构的纠纷等，都是企业运营和行业发展的种种难题。从本质上来看皆是“人为风险”。对于娱乐行业也同样，明星的负面消息会给代言品牌带来不同程度的影响。

       「WUWI/HBC」创始人兼CEO孙博认为，虚拟形象人设稳定，可高频次出席相关品牌活动，可很好地规避MCN机构对特定IP长期稳定持有、相对真人IP可能出现的各类突发事件，收费昂贵、品牌方难以积累自有流量等问题，同时减少在前期打造IP上付出而后期无法收回的沉没成本。简单来说“在虚拟形象上的支出，永远都是花在自己品牌身上的”。

          而虚拟形象的制作成本一直令企业或品牌方望而却步，据孙博介绍，如虚拟美妆达人柳夜熙为例，制作涉及场地建设、光学动作捕捉设备等多环节的投入，每条视频起码需要五十万元制作成本。

         基于「WUWI/HBC」较早前积累的深度机器学习技术以及虚拟素材的大量积累，运用算法将视频中人脸、身材、妆容生成，可实现3-5天的快速建模，缩短虚拟形象制作的时间成本；同时支持光学、视觉、惯性等多种动作捕捉方案，依托「WUWI/HBC」自主研发的人工智能算法高精度建模技术以及IHUMAN虚拟形象实时直播软件，硬件囊括iPhone、Kinect深度摄像头等，从轻便平民级到专业级，覆盖零元到数十万的产品线，客户不再受制于成本限制，按需采购即可。

          技术团队方面，创始人孙博毕业于北京师范大学电子与信息系统专业，有着多年人工智能领域项目开发经验，其余团队成员拥有人工智能、心理学以及影视行业等相关专业背景和从业经验。目前「WUWI/HBC」拥有8项专利和56项软件著作权，并在2021年入选了北京市第七批“专精特新”企业。

          此外，「WUWI/HBC」也正打造自有IP形象和自建市场渠道，孙博展望，随着元宇宙相关技术的不断普及和发展，未来每个人都会拥有属于自己的虚拟形象，虚拟形象制作也许会转化为像“卖游戏皮肤”一样的C端生意。孙博将「WUWI/HBC」定位于技术供应商，依托IHUMAN虚拟形象驱动系统，为元宇宙行业提供技术支持，同时为客户提供直接有效的技术解决方案，走出当前因技术层层流转、叠加而导致利润率低的困境。

          此前，「WUWI/HBC」曾获来自微美全息和创利基金的两轮战略融资，孙博预计，公司将在今年6月开启新一轮融资。

文 | 刘晓潼

编辑 | 江倩君
选自36氪Published on 30 December 2022 at 10:14