Yang Yan/Wen
The Internet era of virtual reality integration has begun.
In 2021, we ushered in a new wave of new opportunities for the development of digital people, including a variety of breakthrough IPs, as well as pioneering companies from a variety of industries, such as pan-entertainment, news media, sports tournaments, retailers, financial services, and so on, together with the leading technology companies and CG creation companies have been exploring new scenarios, models, and boundaries for the application of AI digital people in their respective areas.
For this field, we believe that there will be ten major outlook directions in the future.
Outlook 1: An important hand in the digital transformation of the industry
With the deep application and in-depth integration in the fields of pan-entertainment, commercial retailing, financial services, cultural tourism, cultural and recreational activities, medical care and health care, sports events, etc., the refinement and specialization of the digital human services will continue to bring the value of reducing costs and increasing efficiency for the industrial development back to enhance the "human effect", and to improve the "human effect". "The newest addition to the lineup is a new, more robust, and more efficient way for users to access the latest technology and services, and to make the most of their time.
Outlook 2: The core "human" assets of enterprise competition
AI digital people are different from the ordinary CG production of digital people, they are not only a digital asset belonging to the enterprise, but as an important digital "AI digital people based on the "intelligent brain" can through independent learning, constantly update the cognitive system, in order to realize the "human" resources sustainable development. "The AI can also be used to create a new, more efficient, and more reliable system that can be used in the future.
Outlook 3: Aging generates demand for "companion" digital people
Social aging not only brings a sharp decline in the demographic dividend, aging itself is accompanied by a sense of mental isolation of the elderly group, as well as a series of psychological or physiological illnesses triggered by aging. A survey found that 60 70-year-olds have a sense of loneliness accounted for about 1 / 3 of the elderly group, 80 years of age or older accounted for about 60%. The aging of society is also giving rise to the demand for "companion" AI digital people, especially for the large number of elderly people who live alone and are not living alone, through the "companion" AI digital people to help alleviate the sense of mental isolation, and improve the social problems associated with the aging trend.
Outlook 4: Development platform "online" (DHaaS) is the trend
Digital Human as a Service (DHaaS) online development platform will become the "innovation toolbox" for PUGC.
Digital Human as a Service (DHaaS) online development platform will become the PUGC's "innovation toolbox", empowering the AI digital human generation, drive, intelligence, operation of the "whole chain" production and operation process, **** to enjoy the rich library of materials, knowledge, content library, through the "LEGO-ized" easy operation, the "LEGO-ized" easy to use. Through the simple operation of "Legoization", it helps to significantly reduce the application threshold and cost of digital person, covering long-tail UGC users and small and medium-sized enterprise users to quickly have a "digital person production line" of their own, and to enjoy the world's leading scientific and technological dividends from the platform for the first time while realizing the freedom of use of AI digital person. The company's main goal is to provide the best possible service to its customers.
Outlook 5: The basic composition of the future virtual world
With the gradual maturation of artificial intelligence, virtual reality and other related technologies, the AI digital person will become an important entry point for us to connect with the digital world, an important medium for human-computer interaction, and with the digital space, digital assets, and the digital body (Avatar) together, constituting the basic composition of the future virtual world. together with digital space, digital assets, digitalized body (Avatar) and so on, will constitute the basic structure of the future virtual-reality fusion world. Just like the smartphones we use today, we not only quickly establish a connection with the two-dimensional cyberspace through mobile applications, but also gain a convenient life experience through interaction with mobile applications. In the future, we can also realize the direct connection with 3D cyberspace through AI Agent and other intelligent softwares, and enjoy a richer and more immersive service experience through the interaction between reality and reality.
Outlook 6: Data security and user privacy protection are still key
As one of the basic components of the digital world, digital people are also facing governance challenges such as data security and network security. Especially when the digital person in the production life of the permeability of the higher and higher, play an increasingly important role, its system security will become extremely important. In addition, as a medium of human-computer interaction, digital people will also involve user privacy and ethical issues in their daily applications. These issues need to be addressed through the establishment of a series of regulatory and safeguard mechanisms, as well as through the use of technological means.
Outlook 7: High-grade digital people rely on general AI technology development
Under the leadership of a number of AI technology enterprises, the development of digital people has stepped into the early stages of the L4 level, in the production of efficiency and the level of intelligence have significantly been rapidly improved, and can be used to replace the real person to solve the problem of some of the repetitive in the field of specialization, standardized degree of high service demand. However, in order to evolve to a higher level, it is necessary to rely on the development and maturity of general artificial intelligence technology, so as to be able to deal with global and generalized problems like human beings. Currently, the leading AI companies represented by SmarTone are working on the research and development of general algorithmic models, and carrying out full-stack technology layout and integration development in various directions such as vision, speech, natural language understanding, etc., so as to realize the leap from L4 to L5 level of AI digital human to build a good bottom layer infrastructure.
Outlook 8: "Cloud-side and end-to-end" collaborative computing to support the future of large-scale applications
As the application boundary of AI digital man gradually expands, and the application in various industries continues to deepen, the high fidelity, high real-time, and high concurrency of the AI digital man not only has high network transmission requirements, but also has a high impact on the AI digital man's performance. Network transmission requirements are high, and the real-time rendering and AI computing capabilities of AI digital people also put forward high requirements. On the one hand, through low-latency network transmission and cloud-side-end collaborative computing, it can reduce the performance limitations of AI digital human scale application on terminal hardware, and support any model, specification and performance of terminal equipment or system to seamlessly access and use AI digital human; on the other hand, to support the AI digital human's own data training and autonomous learning process involves data security and privacy considerations, and also requires On the other hand, supporting the AI digital person's own data training and autonomous learning process involves data security and privacy considerations, and also requires a collaborative deployment of the cloud, edge and end to guarantee.
Outlook 9: Digital human asset authentication and circulation will promote the active trading market
As one of the forms of digital assets, the ownership relationship and value of digital humans need to be certified by the market, in order to further promote the smooth progress of market transactions. Therefore, based on blockchain technology, the establishment of the right and circulation mechanism for digital person assets will be very important.
Outlook 10: The development of the digital human market will give birth to a batch of new businesses and new opportunities
With the construction of platform infrastructure and empowerment, more and more enterprises will join the digital human industry ecosystem, and the division of labor in the digital human market is becoming more and more subdivided, and diversified and refined application needs around the vertical field will give birth to a large number of new businesses, such as AI training for digital human. A large number of innovative enterprises or innovative professions, such as digital human AI training, digital human material creation, digital human asset management and services, will further form a number of B2C, B2B, C2M-style digital human retail platforms, which will summarize and match the new demand and new supply.
(The author is the director of strategic ecological research of Shangtang Intelligent Industry Research Institute)