After a generation of singing, Teresa Teng was "resurrected". On the stage of Jiangsu Satellite TV's New Year Concert in 2022, "Deng Lijun", presented through virtual human technology, sang "small town story", "walking on the road of life" and "big fish" on the same stage with singer Zhou Shen. "Teresa Teng", who came across time and space, has soft eyes and a smile. She is no different from real people, and even gives people the illusion that "Teresa Teng has never left". In station B and iqiyi, the bullet screen was also instantly brushed by "tears". "Teng Lijun's expression is flexible, just like a real person, and the skirt pleats can swing, and the microphone still has shadows. Virtual human technology is an eye opener." An audience member described his impressions to bullet finance. This dream linkage made him "still feel shocked up to now". It is not only "Teresa Teng" that is shocking. On the stage of the new year's concert, six virtual idols of the vsinger family, including Luo Tianyi, Yanhe and le Zhengling, also danced with the hard candy girl 303. The virtual idols are not inferior to the real idols in terms of action, rhythm and strength. The other side of Deng Lijun and Luo Tianyi on the mainstream stage is that virtual idols are pouring into the real world at an incredible speed: holding tour concerts, receiving advertising endorsements, carrying goods live, appearing on the cover of fashion magazines and so on. The 2021 China Virtual idol consumer market research report released by Huskar culture shows that only about 23% of consumers have never heard of virtual idols. This means that the market education for virtual idols has been preliminarily completed. The popularity of virtual idols has been heating up in recent years. According to the data of tianyancha, there are more than 288000 "virtual human" related enterprises in China. From 2016 to 2020, the compound growth rate of newly registered enterprises in five years was close to 60%. In addition, according to the survey data of AI media consulting, the core industry scale of Chinese Virtual idols and the surrounding market scale of virtual idols were 3.46 billion yuan and 64.56 billion yuan respectively in 2020. It is estimated that by 2022, these two figures will be 20.52 billion yuan and 333.47 billion yuan respectively. A more obvious trend is that although the virtual idol is still in its early stage, it has begun to develop and evolve in the direction of intelligence, diversification and refinement. At the same time, virtual idols are also penetrating into all walks of life, and thus leveraging an immeasurable consumer market. Who is making and promoting virtual idols? "The outlet of virtual idol has come." An industry person engaged in the operation of virtual idols told bullet finance that virtual idols are emerging and popular on the stage, in the live studio and on the short video platform, which makes him easily aware of the changes in the market environment. "Before that, virtual idols have always been a minority culture and have not attracted much attention." However, in the electro-optic flint room, the drastic changes in the industry have come quietly. The virtual idol group "a-soul", the virtual spokesperson "ayayi", the virtual student "Hua Zhibing" of Tsinghua University and the virtual host "Xiaoyang" of Hunan Satellite TV successively came out of the circle, pushing the virtual idol industry into the spotlight. A phenomenal example is that with a 128 second video, the virtual Idol "Liu Yexi", who claims to be able to catch demons, sucked millions of powder overnight. So far, Liu Yexi has more than 8 million fans, with a total of 840 million videos. "Liu Yexi has received the first wave of tuyere dividends. With the birth of more and more virtual idols, this industry will bring huge incremental value to all fields." The above practitioners said. Virtual idols can connect the characteristics of all walks of life and have diversified ways of cash realization. They have also attracted a number of Internet giants with a keen sense of smell to join the game. At present, more and more Internet giants are cutting into the virtual idol track from their areas of expertise. Byte beating still continues the tradition of "buying and buying". On January 6, the virtual Idol "Li Weike" obtained a strategic investment of tens of millions of Yuan exclusively invested by byte beat, which is also the first financing on the virtual idol track in 2022. According to the idea of Ru Yi, the founder of Li Weike's operating company Hangzhou Li Weike Technology Co., Ltd., Li Wei may interact and communicate with users in XR (extended reality) glasses. The core idea is to realize emotional connection and social attributes. Some investors said that after many contacts, out of optimism about the model, the investment team finalized the financing in only two months. Whether virtual idols have the ability to interact with real people is one of the investment logic of byte beating. In November 2020, Lehua entertainment launched the first virtual idol group "a-soul". The five members of a-soul are operated by one of them (i.e. the real voice actor behind the virtual Idol), which can interact and communicate with real people. Just a few months after its debut, a-soul has more than 3 million fans in the whole network, and successfully "joined" in July 2021. "At present, most virtual idols focus on CG animation and pursue realistic appearance. For example, 'Teng Lijun' can only run according to the established track and lacks the ability to interact with real people," the above industry person told bullet finance, "Driven by artificial intelligence, making virtual idols interact with real people and establish emotional relationships is a very important breakthrough direction." However, it is not easy to break through this direction. Roughly speaking, virtual idols are composed of five modules: character image, voice generation, animation generation, audio and video synthetic display and interaction, but behind the five modules, they are supported by the mutual cooperation of upstream and downstream industrial chain technologies. Up to now, station B is the only Internet giant to choose to layout the whole industry chain of virtual idols. Its investment objects include virtual idols manufacturers and operators, multiplayer Interactive Entertainment Creation platforms, original animation R & D producers, music producers, XR digital virtual performance scheme suppliers, VR animation technology suppliers, etc. In addition to direct investment, station B is also overweight to operate virtual idols. In December 2021, the virtual idol group "virtual Cinderella project" created by station B and Sony was officially launched and officially launched in March 2022. Figure / video screenshot of station B The line-up behind the virtual idol group is extremely large. For example, the famous Japanese artist Keira Kihara is hired as the creative director and is responsible for songs and lyrics. The fashion design is fully produced by osare Company Inc., the design team of AKB48 clothing. At the same time, station B is responsible for the development planning of China and overseas, Sony semiconductor solutions and Sony Group R & D center, as technical partners, also brought the industry's top motion capture technology. An insider close to station B disclosed to bullet finance that the virtual Cinderella project has a high priority and has invested a lot of financial and material resources internally to make it bigger and stronger. "It is based on the consideration of commercial realization." In fact, the virtual idol business is very important for station B to broaden the business boundary. According to the information disclosed by Chen Rui, CEO of station B, in the 12th anniversary keynote speech, there were 32412 virtual idols (anchors) on station B in 2021, an increase of 40% year-on-year, and more than 4000 virtual idols (anchors) were broadcast every month. It is the largest virtual idol platform in China. According to the data platform VTBS According to the data captured by MOE, in 2021, the subscription and reward of station B for virtual idols increased by 350% year-on-year. In fact, the importance of virtual idols is also reflected in their financial reports. In the first quarter of 2019, the revenue of value-added service business of station B (including membership, live broadcast business, etc.) was 290 million yuan, and the revenue brought by virtual idols accounted for about 40%. In the third quarter of 2021, the revenue of this business increased by 95% year-on-year to 1.91 billion yuan. Although the proportion of virtual idol's revenue is not disclosed this time, from the attitude that station B does not hesitate to spend a lot of money to layout the whole industrial chain of virtual idol, the virtual idol business may once again create a lot of revenue for station B. Different from the byte jump facing the C end and the B station, baidu chooses to cut into the virtual idol track from the B end. On December 29, 2021, "Gong Jun digital man" launched by Baidu sang "what are you talking about in 2021" on the live debut, and instantly appeared on the microblog hot search list. On the surface, Gong Jun digital man is no different from other virtual idols who interact with others. But in fact, the birth of Gong Jun digital man is entirely based on the intelligent digital human platform "Baidu Intelligent Cloud Xi Ling". The building of intelligent digital human platform reflects Baidu's understanding and thinking of the virtual Idol track to a large extent. The above industry analysts believe that although the virtual idol industry has broad prospects, the high technical threshold and the lack of systematization and specialization greatly limit the development of the industry. The emergence of intelligent digital human platform may reduce the production cycle and difficulty of virtual idols, and it is also of positive significance to promote the popularization of virtual idols. The trend is unstoppable, and more and more Internet giants are pouring into the virtual idol track. Relying on the popular IP in its game matrix, Tencent incubated the virtual idol group "infinite King Group", which not only appeared on the cover of fashion magazines, but also sang the ending song of the film and released a new album. Figure / infinite King Group Netease has developed technologies such as real-time audio and video transmission, synthesis and face comparison, immersive activity system and so on through its Netease enterprise intelligence and Netease Fuxi laboratory, so as to overweight and layout the field of virtual idols. Alibaba launched a virtual idol for e-commerce business, creating a virtual anchor "Mika" and a new Guofeng virtual Idol "Su Duoduo". Xiaohongshu launched the "trend digital age" plan to layout the virtual idol matrix. At present, more than 20 virtual idols such as imma, Alice, Axi Angie and reddi have settled in. Iqiyi cut into this track by creating a talent show "cross dimensional new star" with virtual idols as the main body and operating the virtual band "rich boom". In addition to fans, Internet giants and operators, investment institutions have also participated in promoting and creating the outlet of virtual idols. According to the data of tianyancha, as of December 28, 2021, enterprises in the field of virtual idols have obtained 25 financing, ranging from millions of yuan to tens of millions of dollars. Sequoia Capital, Chuangshi partner capital, Vientiane culture, Netease capital, Shunwei capital, Jinshajiang venture capital and other head investment institutions are all listed. Virtual idols frequently test the commercialization of water If fans, Internet giants, operators and investment institutions have jointly contributed to the explosive growth of the virtual idol industry, then commercialization has become a yardstick to measure whether the industry can develop in the long run. From a purely commercial point of view, virtual idols are perfect. First of all, the life cycle of virtual idol is long enough. If it is operated properly, its popularity can be maintained continuously; Secondly, the character and behavior of virtual idols are completely controllable and will not cause negative public opinion like real idols; Finally, virtual idols can break through time and space constraints and greatly improve productivity. There is a typical example. At the end of 2021, Yu Liang, chairman of the board of directors of Vanke Group, congratulated Cui Xiaopan, winner of the best newcomer award of Vanke headquarters in 2021. Cui Xiaopan is the first virtual employee of Vanke. With the blessing of artificial intelligence and algorithms, he quickly learned how to find problems in processes and data, and worked in various accounts receivable with thousands of times higher efficiency than real employees