By Li Panpan

The Beijing Municipal Government department has come up with an initial program to create a virtual human industry by 2025. Virtual humans, computer-generated digital avatars used in content production, are becoming a burgeoning concept in China as online entertainment companies seek new growth in the metaverse wave.

Beijing Municipal Bureau of Economy and Information Technology released a document recently to support the virtual human industry, the first government plan on such a concept in China. 

The plan said the government intends to develop one or two major virtual human companies by 2025 with revenues of more than RMB5 billion ($737.73 million) each, plus ten more companies that would secure RMB1 billion ($147.55 million) each.

Driven by the metaverse concept, the virtual human market has rapidly heated up in the past year or two, with many companies accelerating their exploration of its application scenarios. In the short term, China’s virtual humans will take the lead to develop in service-based scenarios like livestreaming and virtual customer service.

However, there are still many factors that restrict the development of the industry. The technology used in virtual humans needs to be further strengthened to improve their expression, motion, and intelligence systems, making them more real with smoother and more natural actions. What’s more, virtual humans need to be introduced into more diversified scenarios. They are mainly used as virtual idols, limiting their application scenarios, said an industry observer.