In the live broadcast room at 1 o'clock in the evening, a female anchor was still guiding users to buy group buying coupons. "She" is the anchor of Wangli Restaurant. The longest record is that she has been selling goods for 13 hours. Occasionally, passing viewers asked questions, but "she" did not respond.

This anchor is not a real person, but a digital person that Wang Li bought for more than 2,000 yuan and has the right to use it for one year.

"The cost is much lower than asking bloggers to visit the store." Wang Li was very satisfied with this newly hired "employee" at first, but now he has no confidence at all. "Digital Company said it could broadcast 24 hours a day in a loop, but the actual situation is that accounts are frequently banned by the platform, and sales can't be contacted even if they want to provide after-sales service."

Wang Li felt that he didn't make any money or attract traffic, but instead got cut off. He is not the only one. A large number of merchants said that their digital live broadcasts were banned by the platform as illegal. Many of them, like Wang Li, had no access to after-sales service.

At the end of last year, with the help of AIGC, financial influencers such as Liu Run, founder of Runmi Consulting, revealed that they were using digital human clones, and virtual digital humans have rapidly become popular.

"Brother, you've been cheated. This is a recorded broadcast." Wang Li sent the video of Digital Man's live broadcast to several industry groups for HE Tuber advice, and someone told him so.

When digital people sweep into major live broadcast rooms, a "ban wave" is also happening at the same time. Based on the opinions of many interviewees, recording and broadcasting is currently one of the most common pitfalls for digital live broadcasts.

Because the digital people who record and broadcast are "rampant" on the market, their costs are lower and the technology is relatively backward. You only need to write the script, enter the corresponding software, let the "digital people" generate the video according to the script, and play the video during the live broadcast.

"Many of the first batch of merchants to try digital human live broadcast technology were cut off by the recording and broadcasting." Zhang Xian, head of the digital human agency, said that many merchants have never done live broadcast before and are not familiar with the platform rules, but they are very familiar with digital human beings. If you are interested, you will spend RMB 8,000 to buy a digital camera that can record videos from an agent, but it will be easily blocked.”

In fact, whether it is a real person or a digital person, recording and broadcasting on Douyin and Taobao Live are severely cracked down. Song Xinxin, an operator of the live broadcast platform, said that this is because the platform requires real-time responses based on the on-site situation during live broadcasts, but recording and broadcasting cannot do this.

Douyin's "Digital Human Industry Initiative" mentions that digital human live broadcasts must be driven by real people for real-time interaction, and interactions completely driven by AI are not allowed.

Chen Hong, founder of 51 Digital People, told "Ding Focus", "If the live broadcast content is repeated for a long time, or a set of live broadcast techniques are used repeatedly in a short period of time, it may be banned from recording and broadcasting."

"Bumping in the face" may also be recognized by the platform as a recorded broadcast, and the probability of being banned will also increase.

"If you get several accounts and use the same digital person, it means that you are likely to buy the same digital person model." Zhou Lu said that this greatly affects the user experience, because theoretically the same person cannot appear at the same time. In multiple live broadcast rooms, talking about different content.

Gao Cong, an entrepreneur in the field of AI, told Dingjiao that it costs millions of yuan to produce a realistic and phenomenal digital avatar, such as Liu Run, while most small and medium-sized enterprises can only afford digital humans priced at a hundred or a thousand yuan. Most people choose male models, and it is easy for their faces and voices to clash.

The current product models of digital humans are divided into public models (public models), anchor customization and source code systems . The prices range from a hundred yuan to tens of thousands of yuan. The main difference is the authenticity of the image and voice.

Fixed focus mapping

Among them, public models are the cheapest. The mainstream digital human platforms on the market all provide a certain number of public models, and the monthly cost is tens to hundreds of yuan.

Those who want to appear in their own image will usually choose the anchor customization mode. The price has experienced a dive, from hundreds of thousands before to a few hundred to several thousand yuan now. Later video generation will be charged separately based on the length of time.

The outside world believes that the third model is the most expensive, which is the digital human system source code or SaaS software. After purchase, the digital human can be modified independently. Many companies quote prices of around 50,000 yuan.

The lack of real-name registration and identification is also the reason why some digital people’s accounts have been blocked. Douyin mentioned in the "Digital Human Industry Initiative" that virtual humans are required to register with their real names on the platform and identify the virtual humans for live broadcasts to facilitate public judgment.

Chen Hong told Dingjiao that the registration process is “not easy to get through” for some small and medium-sized enterprises.

However, from the perspective of the platform, the problem of risk control of digital human content is indeed becoming increasingly serious. The content generated by artificial intelligence itself is difficult to distinguish between true and false, and some digital people are highly lifelike, making it difficult to hold accountable if the loopholes are taken advantage of by black and gray products.

Lawyer Li Min, a special researcher at the e-commerce research center of NetEase and a senior partner of Shanghai Hansheng Law Firm, once pointed out to the media that the main purpose of Douyin issuing this specification is to regulate artificial intelligence-generated content on the platform and prevent it from infringing. And other issues. At the same time, Douyin’s release of regulations will help reduce the platform’s liability after infringement cases occur. Current laws stipulate that if a platform fails to take necessary measures for infringement cases on the platform, it must bear joint and several liability with the infringer for the expanded losses.

Lu said on Monday that some accounts were banned due to content infringement, violations, or false propaganda and fraud.

In addition, poor quality of digital content will also attract the attention of the platform.

Chen Hong summarized the three main manifestations of low-quality digital people: the mouth shape does not match , or the audio and video are out of sync; the video quality is rough , 720 resolution is used to pretend to be 1080 high-definition, the image has green edges, and the characters' movements are unnatural , the actual delivery and advertising investment cases are not on the right side; the interaction is poor, mainly manifested in using recorded broadcasts to pretend to be live broadcasts , the Q&A feedback in the live broadcast room is slow, and real-time interaction is not possible, and the use of real-person voice drivers in the background does not save labor costs.

If a customer encounters a ban on their account, Zhang Xian said that he will remind the customer to take the product offline and provide guidance on unblocking it. “But if the problem cannot be solved, we have no solution.” He reminded that no company can guarantee that it will not be banned.

In the final analysis, the increased supervision is due to the uneven quality of digital people in video and live broadcast rooms. Digital people with good effects can make it difficult to distinguish between real and fake, and can even be used as profit-making tools; digital people with poor effects can look like "dummy people" at first glance, affecting the user experience.

Based on the analysis of many interviewees, because this industry has developed recently , the technical side is far away from the market, which can easily lead to a mismatch between products and market demand. Moreover, digital human technology has the characteristics of "it is easy to enter the market but difficult to do it deeply ".

Chen Hong sorted out the high-quality digital human cases that have appeared recently in "Dingjian", including Liu Run's digital human clone, Wanda's digital human anchor, the digital insurance agent made by face-changing technology for Mingya Insurance, etc. Many people lamented , "It turns out that digital people can be so real." There are also a large number of digital people cases from nearly a hundred digital people companies such as Silicon Intelligence and Fengping Intelligence, which jointly promote the development of the industry.

The two groups of people were the most excited. One group is small and medium-sized entrepreneurs who originally wanted to make short videos, but were limited by the production threshold, or had limited energy and lack of expressive ability . What excites them is that they can have a digital human clone for just a few hundred or several thousand yuan.

Technology companies that export digital human products are also very excited, but many small companies have imperfect sales channels and lack customer resources; large companies are unwilling to invest too many service personnel because of the low unit price of 2D digital humans and high after-sales costs. There is no dedicated agency operation company in this brand-new field, so another group of people, namely agents with a large number of customer resources, have entered the market with a high profile.

The product is made by Digital Human Technology Company, and the agent is the role between the customer and the product side. Because the digital human market has great potential, many agency companies provide one-stop services, from selling digital human products to offline digital human training, with the goal of winning over small and medium-sized enterprises that want to do short videos and e-commerce. During this period, many agents used digital human videos to sell and give lectures, which was full of gimmicks.

The result of various factors is that not only are the prices of digital human products opaque, but it is also difficult for the supply side to see the real market demand clearly, and the products produced cannot solve the pain points.

According to Chen Hong's observation of the market, customers' core demand for digital human products is to pursue authenticity as much as possible based on budget. However, many digital people on the market "explain in a 24-hour loop, without drinking a sip of water, without smiling, without atmosphere, without interaction. The authenticity and experience are very poor. Even if users see it, they will most likely cross it."

Many people think that digital people are "too fake" because there are too many people entering this emerging market, but the technology is limited, there are not many high-quality products produced, and the user experience is not good.

Source of virtual human technology types/ China Business Industry Research Institute

Nowadays, most of the digital people in videos and live broadcasts are 2D real people. Compared with the 3D hyper-realistic Liu Yexi and the 2D cartoon A-SOUL, the production cost is lower and the production cycle is shorter, but the actual effects are uneven.

Broadcasting digital people have satisfied the basic experience because of their unified explanation skills , and are more typical in the fields of knowledge payment and health knowledge; however, the interactive digital people in the live broadcast room are still relatively "fake".

"The mainstream interaction method for digital people to live broadcast is to prepare a standard question bank. After triggering the keywords, directly select the answer from the question bank and let the digital people 'speak' out." Chen Hong introduced.

Huang Bo, CEO of Huameng New Media Group and Chairman of Taobao Alliance Chengdu, told Dingjiao that real-time interaction is the key to transaction conversion in the live broadcast room. The focus of many companies’ propaganda is that “digital people can replace real anchors and interact with users”, but the real AI There are very few digital people with automated conversations and automated chat functions.

"Fixed Focus" asks questions through the comment area in the live broadcast rooms of multiple leading brands that use digital people. One type does not give a response; the other type can give "XX has received your question, please wait for a reply." , but either a reply is given after a few minutes that does not answer the question, or there is no reply after waiting for five minutes.

Many interviewees mentioned that if the shortcomings of poor interactivity cannot be solved, the market space for digital people will be limited. At present, a large number of live broadcast rooms use real anchors during prime time and supplement them with digital anchors during leisure time.

Gao Cong told "Fixed Focus" that the next generation of digital human live broadcast products will develop in two directions: improving people and connecting to large models , both to improve the interactive experience and make it closer to real people, but the current cost is high.

"Small and medium-sized business owners have been cut off, agencies have made a lot of money, and digital human technology companies have come to the forefront, creating a number of star startups." Song Xinxin summarized the current digital human industry chain this way. As for the subsequent development, in addition to technological progress, it depends on market acceptance, and the main demand parties are waiting to see the attitude of the platform.

Customers use digital humans simply to reduce costs or generate revenue. “Including the past period of time, businesses in cross-border e-commerce and local life fields (mainly catering, wine and tourism) have become more enthusiastic about digital people. This is because cross-border e-commerce has more urgent demands for cost reduction, and local life businesses are in a period of In the online stage." Zhou analyzed all the way.

Even MCNs (hosts and Internet celebrity operators) are eyeing digital people because of this. Cheng Cheng, the relevant person in charge of the e-commerce platform, told "Dingjiao" that some leading MCNs such as Qianxun are making digital human-related products. They are not making a digital version of "XXX" for the anchors, but creating investment cases to sell to merchants. .

Agents, MCNs, and the market are all conveying a view that in-store broadcasting is the home of digital people’s live broadcasting . Many merchants are indeed interested in digital human products, but what they are most worried about, apart from the unsatisfactory results, is account suspension.

“As far as I know, many merchants are afraid of being blocked ,” Wang Chen, a cross-border e-commerce merchant, told Dingjiao that he spent 30,000 yuan six months ago to customize a digital human from a digital human technology company. , the other party promised at that time