By Kate Yuan

(JW Insights) June 6 -- Chinese AI chatbot developer Xiaoice (小冰公司) launched avatars that mimic celebrities, Yicai Global reported on June 5.

Celebrities who have hundreds of millions of followers have already signed up to create their own AI clones, Xiaoice said, citing backend system data. The first batch of AI clones will be limited to 300 out of safety considerations, it noted.

The developer plans to release a new clone every Thursday, China National Radio reported online on June 1.

The underlying tech used in the process includes Xiaoice’s cross-lingual large language model as well as sound and neural network rendering technology, which enables the AI clones to have personalities and characteristics to some extent and the ability to finish tasks.

An AI pioneer in the Chinese market, Xiaoice was spun off from Microsoft China in July 2020 and is developing AI and cloud computing industry solutions for the local market.

Xiaoice announced plans to launch its GPT Clone Human Project in the Chinese and Japanese markets on May 6. The clones are based on the personality, skills, sounds, and appearance of stars as well as experts in various fields, and all that is needed is data that can be collected from them in as few as three minutes, the developer said. It will provide a platform to enable human clients to offer their AI clones to followers with or without charge.

The Beijing-based company said it would not open the application programming interface, to avoid the risk of abuse with the clones. Also, their ability to interact with users is restricted to a specific app, according to the Yicai Global report.

(Gao J)