Digital fashion models enhance live streaming

Digital models dressed in sportswear strut down the runway at an online virtual fashion show during China Fashion Week in September. Home-grown sportswear maker Anta Sports, led by technology company Baidu Inc.’s virtual spokeswoman in Zhejiang, has unveiled its latest apparel in a variety of virtual environments — stadiums, ice rinks, the Gobi Desert and even space.

Virtual people and fashion shows, a physical event that is not limited by time and space, offer countless advantages to the fashion industry, bringing a new, immersive and interactive experience to the audience.

Thanks to the advancement of AI, digital avatars that resemble a real person in appearance and behavior have been used not only in fashion and live broadcasting, but also in many other functions, industry experts said.

Li Xian, head of Baidu’s digital human and robotics department, said in Xiling – the company’s digital avatar platform – the production cost of virtual clothing has been significantly reduced, and production time has been shortened by using real-time calculation and animation rendering technologies. Just over a month to a week.

A growing number of brands are looking to use virtual creatures in live broadcasts and other marketing campaigns, he said, which is expected to reduce operating costs by at least 50 percent by reducing expenses on brick-and-mortar live broadcast locations, hardware, and hiring. Real human anchors.

“The virtual human industry is still in its infancy, and there are some challenges, such as how to produce low-cost digital assets and digital content, and how to make digital people naturally interact with real people,” Lee said.

Solving these problems depends on replicating technologies such as natural language processing and computer vision, Lee said, adding that the company will continue to invest capital and manpower in the digital human resources industry.

China’s virtual human market size is forecast to reach 270 billion yuan ($37.9 billion) by 2030, according to an industry report focused on AI and other advanced technologies by Qbit-AI, an industry service platform.

According to experts, the fashion landscape is rapidly expanding its virtual horizons to prepare for a future filled with digital avatars, and the most accessible way for fashion brands to engage with virtual replicas is by wearing their latest collections.

“The application of virtual people in the field of fashion has special advantages. Holding virtual fashion shows does not only mean moving real-world shows online, but more importantly, we can use the digital space to promote fashion and imagination as much as possible. Chen, director of the Digital Economy Integration Innovation Development Center at the Central University of Finance and Economics. Duane said.

According to Chen, for example, people can use textures that do not exist in the physical world, and digital people go beyond the physiological limits of real people and present new fashion patterns in a new way.

According to Zhu Xiaowen, an analyst at Lead-Leo Research Institute, digital people are increasingly being used for brand promotion, advertising, live broadcasting, gaming and entertainment. However, she added, a new set of issues has emerged, such as personal privacy protection and data security. Experts said that the uncontrolled use of digital people could open the way for fraud as digital people would be difficult to distinguish from real people.

China’s first virtual influencer, Ayayi, who debuted on social media Xiaohongshu in May 2021 and gained more than 20,000 followers overnight, has attracted the attention of famous fashion brands such as Louis Vuitton and Guerlain.

Pan Helin, associate director of the Digital Economy and Financial Innovation Research Center at Zhejiang University’s International Business School, expressed optimism about the business opportunities of virtual human beings in fashion and live streaming, and called for more efforts to improve 3D modeling, rendering and presentation. Motion capture technologies to strengthen the country’s digital workforce.