China’s “China tiktok” will provide a bigger stage for Chinese idols. AYAYI is very active in social media. She has 770 thousand fans on micro-blog, Xiao Hong and jitter, and will release her own dynamic to fans, “Singapore’s Straits Times February 28th article”. In these posts, people can see ayayi’s group photos with celebrities, share fashion tips and participate in various promotion activities.

Ayayi has platinum blond hair, porcelain white skin and carefully decorated eyes. The difference between her and other net Reds is that she only exists online. She is the first “meta human” (super realistic digital human) in China. She was given “life” by a technology company in Shanghai on May 20 last year. With the increasingly realistic animation technology and frequent star scandals, virtual idols such as ayayi are rapidly becoming popular in China and frequently appear in the promotion activities of fashion brands and e-commerce platforms.

Virtual idols are usually presented in two ways: one is represented by ayayi, whose image is as close to real people as possible; The other is represented by virtual singer Luo Tianyi, whose image is similar to animation or cartoon characters.

An industry report released last year by AI media consulting, a market research enterprise, predicted that the scale of the virtual idol industry is expected to reach 333.47 billion yuan in 2023, an increase of 40 times from 8.09 billion yuan in 2017.

A survey of 200 post-90s in China last year showed that 62.6% of respondents liked virtual idols because they were “perfect” and would not be plagued by scandal. The growing number of virtual idols has benefited virtual reality companies. For example, a technology company in Guangzhou cooperates with BiliBili, a video platform, to play virtual idol concerts every month. In 2019, four years after its establishment, the company made a profit and began to provide technology to game giants such as Tencent and Netease to help them design characters, debug software and make virtual stages.

As Internet start-ups and technology giants compete to enter the “meta universe”, virtual idols are expected to become more popular. However, virtual idols also have shortcomings. Compared with real idols, their “experience” range is limited, so the range of products endorsed is narrower. (translated by aw Cheng Wei and Wang Huicong)