At the end of last year, Cui Xiaopan won the outstanding employee award for her performance at China's leading real estate developer China Vanke. Since joining the Finance Department of Vanke in February 2021, she has quickly learned how to spot problems in processing data. In the eyes of her superiors, Cui is a fast learner and can work thousands of times more efficiently than her colleagues; what's impressive is that she is able to work year-round without taking a day off—or getting paid.

Cui is a virtual employee developed by artificial intelligence (AI) scientist Shen Xiangyang and his team.

"We have entered the era of AI and it will inevitably become part of daily life. We are the first generation to deal with it, whether we like it or not, we have no choice but to go with it; we can, however, decide how to use AI," Shen said during a meeting via video link from Tsinghua University in March 2020.

In recent years, virtual humans have entered China's public orbit, as company employees, idols, anchors and influencers, sparking amazement and concern alike.

Emerge and evolve 

The concept of the virtual human first appeared in the medical field. In the 1980s, the term "virtual digital man" originated from the "visible human project" launched by the National Medical Library of the United States. In November 2001, a "digital virtual human body" was put forward during the 174th Xiangshan Science Conference themed on the scientific and technological aspect of China's digital virtual human body. These virtual people mainly refer to the visualization of the human body structure in three-dimensional form, primarily used in human anatomy education, clinical diagnosis and medical treatment.

Nowadays, virtual people can be divided into roughly three categories in terms of the functions they perform, said Shen Yang, Executive Director of the New Media Research Center with the School of Journalism and Communication at Tsinghua University. The first category works in communication media, such as virtual celebrities, idols, and anchors; the second is in professional services, such as virtual experts, doctors, teachers, and employees; and the third is for companionship, such as virtual pets and family members.

"There's much room for their extended application in media, entertainment, government affairs, healthcare, education, finance, and elderly care," Shen said.

Currently in China, the virtual digital human usually refers to the virtual human existing only in digital shape, unlike robots with physical entities. Take Cui as an example, people could only see her from her profile picture on e-mail and other related office software; she does not have a physical form.

A famous virtual digital human in China is Luo Tianyi, developed in 2012 by the Yamaha Corp. in collaboration with Shanghai HENIAN Information Technology Co. Ltd. In July 2019, Luo put on quite the show inside a Shanghai cultural center, cheered on by a nearly 10,000-strong "real" audience. Luo shared the stage with more than 10 popular virtual singers from China and Japan, including Japanese pop star Hatsune Miku, who made her debut in 2007 as a 16-year-old character persona developed by Crypton Future Media using Yamaha's voice synthesizer software.

Another popular one is virtual beauty vlogger Liu Yexi, who debuted on Douyin, the Chinese version of TikTok, in October last year and gained more than 2.8 million followers in four days. Her first short video, exhibiting Chinese traditional cultural and sci-fi elements, wowed netizens. Some professional beauty vloggers, too, left their comments under the video, complaining Liu might put them out of business—by diverting their online traffic.

Across China's roaring realm of e-commerce, virtual live-streamers are embracing an ever-larger consumer populace. During one live-streaming sales event in March 2020, Luo teamed up with Chinese actor Ren Jialun to sell Tide, the American laundry detergent, and interacted with customers over 60 million times online. Sales that night on Chinese e-commerce platform JD.com hit a record high.

Fab or fad? 

According to the Virtual Digital Human In-Depth Industry Report released by QbitAI, a Beijing-based market research institute, by 2030, the overall market size of China's virtual humans will reach 270 billion yuan($42 billion); as of now, the industry remains in the early stages of development. 

The evolution of virtual figures should be encouraged, but the industry still has a long way to go, Ding Daoshi, an independent analyst in the online sector, believes.

"These so-called virtual idols have real human teams backing and controlling them. They are not 100 percent virtual. The real virtual idol will emerge when AI achieves a new level of self-learning and self-training, allowing the idols to interact with others," Ding told Global Times.

"Many of the virtual humans are pure business advertising. The technical threshold of virtual humans can be very low. I believe, in the future, one of their most important functions will become to facilitate daily life, increase productivity; driverless vehicles are a good example here," Tan Jieliang, engineer at an AI startup company in Beijing, told Beijing Review.

The concept of virtual figures also comes with certain ethical concerns. "To give a very simple example, when it comes to scams, if my avatar deceives another avatar in the virtual world, should I be held responsible for it or should it be held responsible; and if the latter, how would this work?" AI technology provider rct AI CEO Chen Yuheng said at a seminar in October 2021.

"In real life, there are many laws and regulations for social interactions between people to ensure our safety, but how to ensure the communication between virtual people and humans, and between virtual people and virtual people? These are no longer questions only seen in sci-fi," Chen said, calling on the government to play its part and regulate the virtual realm.

Zhu Ziwei, Chief Technology Officer of Dahua Technology based in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, echoed Chen by forecasting some potentially grave issues, "What must I do if the virtual human becomes too 'human?' It would be hard to judge its purpose in 'life.' This is the ethical food for thought."

(Print Edition Title: When Virtual Faces Reality) 

Copyedited by Elsbeth van Paridon 

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