The trend of generative AI anchors has made AIGC once a key factor in the search for incremental growth in various industries, and live streaming e-commerce is no exception. Months after the ChatGPT fire, the myth of the AI digital person sweeping through the live streaming room began to circulate at the speed of light.
In April this year, Tencent Cloud released an intelligent small sample digital human production platform to seize the market with a modelling speed of three minutes and a cost of only thousands of dollars. And long before that, the professional company of the industry head, has also served more than 40,000 e-commerce bandwagon live rooms.
The blueprint for the future of the industry seems to be sketched out: in the distant future, AI will be just like the replacement of manual labor in other industries, to replace manual labor in this industry, AI digital man is not only “transformation” live room, but rule the live room ……
However, is this really the case?
01The Rise and Status of AI Virtual Live Streaming
With the popularity of live streaming on e-commerce platforms, the demand for real-life anchors has grown, but due to rising recruitment and time costs, as well as their limited online hours, AI anchors have been able to rise to prominence. Unconstrained by the physical limits of human beings. AI anchors are able to broadcast live 24 hours each day, using information distillation technology to answer user questions. At the macro level, there are differences between AI live streaming and real live streaming in terms of content cost, technology, culture and business.
Virtual anchors are a combination of secondary culture and e-commerce culture to meet the consumption preferences of youth subculture groups. Since 2016, AI virtual anchors have gradually emerged, and it is expected that the scale of virtual digital people in China will reach 270 billion by 2030, showing the potential development prospects of AI live broadcasting.AI anchors have lower purchasing and operating costs compared with real anchors, and they generate discourse through digital technology and interact intelligently with the help of knowledge graphs and user feedback.
02The triple value logic of AI live streaming with goods
（1）Content differentiation: AI anchors use emerging technology, IP idols and accurate big data algorithms to achieve live content differentiation. IP idols have a certain fan base, and Generation Z pays more attention to personality needs and is willing to spend money on their own preferences. ai live broadcasting generates a secondary image through emerging technology, which brings a stronger sense of freshness and imagination in the form of AI live broadcasting.
（2）Cheap operating costs: AI anchors enhance the efficiency of live broadcasting through digital algorithms, solving the problem of time costs and state stability of real anchors. The virtual anchor can explain the goods in real time, answer user questions, and is not subject to the restrictions of night and holidays, reducing the time and value cost of the business.
（3）Scene diversification: AI live show virtual and real fusion scene, build new technology live field. Through the interaction between the virtual anchor and the real scene, it breaks the traditional mode of receiving information through live broadcasting, and meets the commercial presentation of secondary yuan culture.AI live broadcasting creates a form of interaction that integrates the virtual and the real, and meets the cultural psychology of the teenage subculture group on the new wave of interaction methods.
03 Will AI virtual anchors replace real ones?
Throwing out the “technical level” of immaturity and other aspects of the live electricity system, AI digital people live, but also face more challenges.
“According to my observation, jittery voice live traffic recommendation, is closely related to your content. Pure AI live broadcasts generally have traffic, but often click in only two or three people or even no one. Sometimes click in to see at most a few hundred people, but go to see the conversion and almost nothing, everyone is watching.” Song Wei, head of Tik Tok Platform Operations, said.
Li Hao, founder of Cass Consulting and founder growth strategy consultant, also said that AI digital people live broadcasting is more applicable to shops on Taobao Jingdong Pinduoduo’s platform, and not applicable to Shake Shake Racer video numbers. Because the latter are more emphasis on obtaining traffic through quality content, but compared to real anchors, the possibility of AI digital people to create quality content is obviously lower at present.
The policy level is also one of the challenges to be faced by the AI digital people, on May 9 this year, Shake released the “Shake on AI-generated content platform norms and industry initiatives”, the norms said that the virtual human anchor needs to be registered in real name, and at the same time need to be marked as a “virtual human live”, which means that attempts to infinitely close to the real life of the bionic human anchors, but still have to face the audience’s direct scrutiny.
In the future, will further upgrades in technology and gradual changes in the environment make it a reality for AI to replace real life anchors?
In this regard, Zhuang Shuai, the founder of Bailian Consulting and a well-known e-commerce expert, said, “As costs fall, the number of digital people will grow exponentially, and in the end people are more competitive instead.”
In reviewing why live-streaming e-commerce has made such a big breakthrough, Zhuang Shuai has said, “People are not willing to be lonely, and live-streaming e-commerce allows people to feel accompanied while shopping. This is the reason why this industry has made a huge breakthrough.” Can that feeling still exist when real human companionship is replaced with cold AI digital people?
Can technological advances fill in the emotional gaps? This scenario may only happen in the distant future.
