![]() ![]() Virtual celebrities can exist anywhere at any time, and they are under total control of the companies they belong to. Insiders told Protocol that the profit margin for most tech companies providing virtual idol solutions is thin.īut it's a worthy investment nevertheless. For example, it can cost millions of yuan to make a 3D virtual idol. ![]() The one-year-old, AI-powered Ling, for instance, with the appearance of a stylish young Chinese woman, has already booked Tesla and Vogue as her clients.ĭeveloping and promoting virtual idols can be as costly as managing real stars. In the past three years, tech and entertainment companies have developed hyper-realistic digitized 3D celebrities who appeal to a wider audience than ACG fans. But cutting-edge technologies like AI, AR and VR have enabled virtual idols to become even more real. Bilibili, the home base for ACG subculture fans, is naturally the biggest platform for virtual celebrities, currently home to over 10,000 virtual idols. It's home to 400 million anime, comics and game (ACG) fans, known as the "two dimensional space" (二次元). Analysts anticipate the entire economy driven by virtual idols to rise to $17 billion in 2021 from 2020's $10 billion.Ĭhina is a perfect virtual idol incubator. The size of China's core virtual idol market reached $540 million in 2020, up 70.3% from 2019, and is expected to reach nearly $1 billion in 2021, according to Chinese market consultancy iiMedia. The virtual idol industry is evolving - and growing - fast. Tech giants such as Alibaba, Tencent and ByteDance have all made investments in developing their own virtual idol IPs or technologies to enrich their existing ecommerce, gaming and short video businesses. At least 10 tech startups that specialize in virtual idol motion capture, image synthesis, AI action processing and image processing technologies have received early rounds of financing up to $5 million since mid-year 2020, according to Chinese tech site 36kr. If ByteDance's endorsement of virtual idols is any indication, China's virtual idols have already entered real life so thoroughly and so quickly that it's easy to miss. In the past few months, the five A-SOUL members have routinely snagged top-earning virtual streamer spots on Bilibili. And Yuehua is backed by TikTok's parent company ByteDance. For example, Beijing-based Yuehua Entertainment manages Eileen's one-year-old band, A-SOUL. This has made virtual idols, who never make mistakes and have no human failings at all, more appealing and investable.īig tech is quickly getting in on the action. ![]() But the virtual idol sector is taking off in 2021 because of technological advances, in AR, VR, and AI, as well as the recent slew of human Chinese celebrities who fell abruptly from stardom - due to everything from tax evasion to sexual assault to having opinions out of step with Party ideology. China's virtual idol economy is fast becoming a piping hot sector that tech companies big and small are racing to exploit.Ĭhinese companies have been developing virtual singers and video streamers for the past decade. ![]() "Eileen" doesn't actually exist she's a virtual idol, and a member of China's most popular virtual girls' band, A-SOUL. By the end of the 2.5-hour show, Eileen raked in nearly 1.5 million yuan ($230,000) from paying fans, topping Bilibili's virtual streamer daily revenue chart.īy the end of the show, Eileen wasn't tired. Tens of thousands of her fans tuned into her livestream channel to share her special day. 8, Chinese celebrity Eileen hosted a glitzy live-streaming concert via the video-sharing platform Bilibili. ![]()
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