In a digital human live broadcast, Luo Yonghao’s digital human and assistant AI Zhu Xiaomu joined hands to attract more than 1.3 million views and achieve 55 million GMV in 7 hours. This has sparked discussions about the future potential and challenges of digital human live broadcasting, especially whether digital human live streaming can become mainstream, driven by technological advancements and cost-effectiveness.
Luo Yonghao’s digital human was also mixed with his “true transmission”.
On June 15, Luo Yonghao’s digital human appeared in Baidu’s preferred live broadcast room, and the digital image of his assistant Zhu Xiaomu was broadcast live together. According to official data from Baidu e-commerce, the live broadcast lasted for 7 hours.The number of viewers exceeded 1.3 million, and the GMV exceeded 55 million, of which 1/3 of the product sales exceeded Luo Yonghao’s live broadcast at the end of May.
Source: Luo Yonghao’s live broadcast replay
After this live broadcast, the outside voice tended to be polarized, some believed that the realistic form of the digital human in the live broadcast room had matured, and the other part questioned its authenticity, “the product display was recorded in advance, and then the accent matching was done”, which is more like Baidu’s marketing event.
In 2023, Luo Yonghao was asked in a live broadcast whether “will digital humans replace live broadcasts in the future”. His answer was “partial replacement, but full replacement is unlikely”, “Even if digital humans can broadcast better than real people, from the complex needs of human nature, everyone still likes to watch live broadcasts.” Two years later, he himself brought this issue to the forefront of the stage through a digital human live broadcast.
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Can AI anchors bring goods to the mainstream?
01 Digital human Lao Luo, grab Luo Yonghao’s “job”?
“Tsingtao beer, refreshing octaves. In the summer, you stock up on a few cans at home, and when you get home, you open the refrigerator and there is cold beer. ”
In the live broadcast room of “Make a Friend”, the digital human Luo Yonghao gushed about his beer experience, and when it came to having fun, he picked up a can of beer and wanted to “do one” with the assistant AI Zhu Xiaomu; When Zhu Xiaomu reported the price mechanism, he picked up his wine glass and took a sip.
Source: Luo Yonghao’s live broadcast replay
Although the specific swallowing action is still a bit stiff, the scene of “digital humans can drink beer” is still quite shocking. After the user steps into the live broadcast room, the most intuitive feeling is that it is “difficult to distinguish between true and false”: as a digital person, Lao Luo’s facial expression is natural, and his body movements are changeable and smooth, not only “reproduce” Luo Yonghao’s classic actions such as pushing glasses, but also pretending to be tired and yawning with fakes; In the past, it was difficult for AI anchors to interact with samples, but the digital human Lao Luo could not only drink beer, but also eat stir-fry with chopsticks, and when explaining a waist protection product, he also quickly climbed onto the table and showed his sitting posture on the spot.
Source: Luo Yonghao’s live broadcast replay
Not only is it a reproduction of expressions and actions, but also the digital human Lao Luo also inherits Luo Yonghao’s language style, which can not only cooperate tacitly with the assistant broadcaster Zhu Xiaomu, praise each other, but also interact with the barrage, and constantly “pick up the stalk” and “play the stalk” in the live broadcast.
Someone asked, can you be as smart as Teacher Luo after eating the eggs brought by Lao Luo, and the digital man Lao Luo replied, “I tell you now that you can become smart after eating eggs, if the child fails the exam, you will have trouble with me, but if you praise me for being smart in disguise, I like it very much”; Someone asked how to distinguish between real and false Moutai, and the digital man Lao Luo replied, “The distress is real, and the liver pain is fake.” ”
And when the question involves the product itself, the digital human can also explain and answer, and even send “benefits” to the interactive audience – when explaining Lin Qingxuan’s camellia essence oil, someone praised Lao Luo in the barrage, and the digital person immediately captured this message, “This friend is an old fan at first glance”, and proposed to give the audience two bottles of purple forest vinegar.
According to Baidu’s official news, in this live broadcast, the digital human generated 97,000 words of script-style explanation content and completed 8,300 action designs. Coupled with more than 7 hours of operation, the “endurance” of AI is far better than that of real anchors.
From the perspective of the final sales figures, although the GMV of more than 55 million is largely due to Luo Yonghao’s IP and the freshness of users to digital human live broadcasts, it also proves to a certain extent that digital human live broadcasts do have the ability to convert real sales, and the fidelity, interaction fluency and scene adaptability brought by technology have been able to support its complex sales logic and consumption decisions.
However, Baidu dances AI with the intention of e-commerce. Compared with “pointing the way” for the future digital human live broadcast, the cooperation between Baidu and Luo Yonghao is essentially a grand marketing, and both sides take what they need.
In 2024, Baidu launched a new e-commerce platform “Baidu Preferred” and invited Chen Peisi and Zhu Shimao, a pair of national partners, to carry out live broadcasts, with a GMV of more than 13 million yuan for the entire live broadcast. After the two went off the air, Zhu Shimao’s digital human image continued to be broadcast.
In 2025, Baidu e-commerce selected Luo Yonghao, who switched from the AR industry to AI large models, and the two sides started their first cooperation at the end of May. After the digital human live broadcast, Baidu quickly officially announced that Luo Yonghao was appointed as the chief product experience officer of Baidu Huiboxing, and announced that its digital human image will be broadcast from time to time. Baidu e-commerce Huiboxing, which provides technical support for live broadcasting, also promoted the platform’s “digital human live broadcast solution”, invited merchants to settle in and operate, and its official website also includes service cases such as Suning Computer, Guanxin Lab, and Northeast Cuihua in the Northeast.
Leaving aside the future of Baidu e-commerce, Luo Yonghao’s digital human live broadcast has brought a cliché question to the forefront: Has the era of digital human live broadcast arrived?
02 Is the era of digital human live broadcast coming?
Luo Yonghao’s digital human live broadcast is easily reminiscent of the “Procurement and Marketing Brother” launched by JD.com in April last year. But in comparison, Liu Qiangdong’s digital image is more stiff, with flat pronunciation, few body movements, and almost no interaction with barrages. At that time, “Brother Dong Selling Procurement” only broadcast for half an hour before going offline, and the live broadcast room was taken over by a live anchor. Although the discussion was not as good as the first time, JD.com still took this opportunity to promote its own digital human platform “Jingdong Yunyanxi”.
Digital human live broadcast is no longer a new topic. In 2023, in a video released by Bilibili UP master @-LKs-, he went to Hangzhou to look at technology and “clone” a digital human of his own. In the video, he first recorded a talking video with small daily movements, and then a video of not speaking for 30 seconds, covering as many angles as possible with the same action. After the recording is completed, any piece of audio given to the digital human can correspond to the mouth shape and body movements of the characters, but less material will cause the character movement cycle to be obvious, and there will be lag from time to time.
Source: Bilibili
2023 is a year of vigorous development of digital human live broadcasting. According to the “2024 White Paper on the Development of China’s Virtual Digital Human Industry” released by iResearch, in 2023, the industrial market size driven by our country’s digital humans will be 333.47 billion yuan, and it is expected to reach 640.27 billion yuan in 2025.
Digital human live broadcast has not yet become mainstream, and digital human products are the first to flourish. At that time, large factories and MCN institutions went down to digital human live broadcasts, and AI anchors entered the public eye in large numbers. For example, Tencent’s “Tencent Zhiying”, MCN agency Qianxun’s subsidiaries Qianyu Intelligence and Lingke, have both launched AI digital human live broadcast business and one-stop AI intelligent live broadcast comprehensive service platform; Taobao released the “AI Ecological Partnership Plan”, and in the 7th anniversary fan festival event of its head anchor @lieer baby, six “AI digital human lieer baby” from different ages also broadcast live and talk with her on the same stage, reviewing the mental journey of the past seven years. This is the first attempt to include a digital human image in Taobao’s head live broadcast room.
In the field of live streaming, digital human anchors have also become common – their predecessors were various virtual anchors active in night shows or 2D intelligent anchors – their role is mainly to fill the night vacancy period, create a 24-hour live broadcast room where the sun never sets, or explore the monetization value of “real person + digital human”.
Cass noticed that compared with other vertical categories, beauty brands have more commonly begun to try digital human live broadcasting, including Hua Xizi, Winona, AKF, etc., because beauty products are basically standard products, with relatively unified discourse and lecture logic, and it is also convenient for digital humans to grab comment keywords for explanation and discourse optimization.
In 2025, the language model will further optimize the live broadcast speech and interaction of digital humans, and only need to input product information to generate professional live broadcast copy and refine the product. Taking Tekan Technology as an example, its digital human products support anchors holding products, audience on-demand explanation of products and intelligent switching between close-up shots, etc. However, its asking price is also expensive, and its official website shows that the self-operated version of the public image digital human costs more than 3,600 yuan per month, and the monthly price of the full-link broadcast and operation exceeds 13,000 yuan.
03 Can digital humans “wrestle” with real people?
“It’s too advanced, and it’s hard to tell if it’s in the live broadcast room in the future.” After dissolving the uncanny valley effect, digital human live broadcasts have gradually converged with live anchors, and they can indeed “wrestle” with some store broadcasters in terms of efficiency in bringing goods. However, for the entire live broadcast e-commerce, this problem may be much more complicated, and merchants who want to enter the digital human live broadcast also need to consider the uneven quality of the industry, vertical barriers, etc.
On the one hand, due to the particularity of the form, digital human live broadcast is limited by the regulations of different platforms. Last year, Tencent Channels issued a revision to the “Detailed Rules for the Implementation of Low-quality Content Published by Channels Window Experts”, which clearly prohibits the use of non-real-time live content or props to replace real live broadcasts during live broadcasts, including digital human live broadcasts and virtual human live broadcasts. Its purpose is to encourage real real anchors, which is also in line with the “acquaintance” ecology of Channels.
In contrast, platforms such as Douyin and Kuaishou have more positive regulations, such as Kuaishou has also launched the AIGC digital human solution “Kuaishou Zhibo” and the digital human platform “Nuwa”. Earlier, virtual anchors were judged by the Douyin platform to be recorded and broadcast, affecting traffic recommendations, and it was not until May 2023 that an industry initiative was released to clarify the compliance of virtual live broadcasts.
On the other hand, the advantage of digital human anchors is that the cost is low, and due to the high standardization of scripts and words, they can avoid risks such as negative public opinion and contract disputes that may occur in real anchors. Mature digital human templates can also be quickly copied to different live broadcast rooms to speed up the start of broadcasting.
It is undeniable that digital human live broadcasts have indeed replaced some live anchors. However, at present, the main application scenarios of digital humans are mainly live broadcast rooms such as store broadcasting and self-broadcasting that do not particularly rely on the anchor’s personal IP, and there are also “barriers” between different industries. For example, for categories that require high emotional needs or value real experience, such as mother and baby, luxury goods, or clothing that requires creativity and strong interactivity, digital human live broadcast may not be convincing.
Relatively speaking, some daily necessities with short decision-making links, as well as 3C digital and beauty categories with high requirements for product parameters and compliance, are the “main battlefields” of digital humans, which can undertake more traffic in addition to live anchors.
At the same time, in a short period of time, digital humans may not be able to learn the magic of the call of head anchors such as Li Jiaqi “all girls”. Returning to the Luo Yonghao digital human live broadcast incident, in the model of “real IP + digital human live broadcast”, the bargaining power of top anchors may be weakened due to the substitution of digital humans, and MCN institutions need to rethink the cooperation model and value proposition with the head anchor.
But the problem is that users like the vividness and realism brought by real people, while digital humans are still far from top live anchors in terms of deep emotional resonance, impromptu humorous interaction, and handling extremely complex or unexpected situations. The path of “real IP + digital human” seems feasible, but in the long run, without the deep empathy with the real anchor, is the digital human live broadcast still fragrant?
“There are no accidents, accidents, emotions, current hexagrams, mistakes, joys, sorrows, emotions and on-the-spot play, etc., although this live broadcast can be false and true, but it takes away the most essential part of Lao Luo.” Under Luo Yonghao’s Weibo, science and technology blogger Zhang Zhou sighed in Luo Yonghao, “The one who can scold the street is the serious Lao Luo.” ”
In the future, giving digital humans more empathy and personality and improving their decision-making flexibility may be the key point of industry upgrading. From this point of view, the next evolutionary direction of virtual digital humans may be “virtual idols”.
