The Rise of Digital Humans may be silent, but in five years they will represent such a large population that they will have hundreds of millions of conversations daily. And it is not just about the metaverse, as the presence of digital humans will be woven into the very fabric of society.
We live in a digital age where flying cars have obtained the certification of airworthiness and air-taxi services with digital tracking will be available as soon as 2030. Digital humans are being cloned after existing employees. Not only will your colleagues soon be digital, but they will know better than you how to achieve the best results.
The digital humans’ industry is now in its incubation period with the use of Web3, the metaverse and AI. This will lead to the rise of digital clones representing a market of USD 527.58 billion in 2030 according to a study by Emergen Research.
Digital humans with an AI brain will assist humans in their daily lives. They work 24/7, they never complain, they never go on strike, nor do they take a coffee-break.
What was deemed to be futuristic is not anymore and investors are targeting the digital sector. China plans to regulate Digital Humans as the government has projected that, by 2025, the market will hit $ 7.3 billion in Beijing alone. Digital humans will soon work in online banking, in PR, in sales and in tourism.
Tech giant Alibaba created a digital influencer for the 2022 Olympic Games and the outspoken young woman was passionate about sports and had her own fans. To bring Dong Dong to life, Alibaba built a special cloud-based AI model that uses Text-to-Speech technology and leveraged 3D-driven innovations to create her realistic facial expressions and natural body movements.
Digital tech companies are creating digital humans and the rise of digital humans is being led by Portuguese company Didimo. According to Crunchbase, Didimo is the world’s leading platform for digital humans. The company has received a total funding of $ 15.9 M and has just raised $ 7.3 million funding mostly from Armilar Venture Partners, but also from Bright Pixel Capital, Portugal Ventures and Techstars. Founder Veronica Costa Orvalho has stated that a new world of digital humans is dawning.
Didimo has developed a method for realistic 3D face reconstruction using a Convolutional Neural Network (CNN) that directly estimates the shape coefficients of a custom 3D Morphable Model (3DMM) from a single picture. An enhanced 3DMM will cover facial expressions to harness the power of effective digital human twins. From the Greek word Didimo, that means twin, the company’s pioneer technology led them to work on projects with Amazon and Sony.
Other companies operating in the field include Microsoft Corporation, UneeQ, Wolf3D, HOUR ONE AI and many others. The digital sphere will become more human and the lines will become blurred, as companies will capture the faces of their employees and turn them into 3D digital human twins.
By 2027, investments in metaverse technologies developing fully virtual workspaces will grow by 30%. Virtual spaces are the future of luxury retail as digital marketing will evolve to include metaverse marketing. The future of luxury branding will include trend mapping methods in order to market trusted brands to new generations.
The world’s largest diamond producer, the De Beers Group, just launched their 2022 Diamond Insight Report, titled ‘A new diamond world: bringing trusted brands to new generations in a digital age’. The report talks about a new breed of humans produced by the fusion of physical and digital that is described as being “phygital”.
This new breed of phygital beings is now being incorporated into retail strategies, branded offerings and Web3 experiences, as these are the key trends shaping how consumers, in particular Gen Z, perceive and engage with suppliers. These trends are converging and accelerating, spurred by global events and by the power of digital technology for a new generation of consumers. According to De Beers, around half of all diamond jewelry purchases in the US are now researched online, highlighting the importance of digital humans.
Web3 and the metaverse are potential game-changers in the field of marketing. These nascent technologies aim to merge the physical and digital worlds and a number of high-profile luxury brands are already investing heavily in this space.
Portuguese company Exclusible is creating a NFT marketplace for luxury brands. The company just obtained a Euros 5M funding. The Portuguese start-up in the field of Web3 and the Metaverse aims at creating a new web generation. The company just bought architectural firm Polycount that produces digital projects on the platform Spatial.io. This allowed Exclusible to penetrate the US market as the first photorealistic metaverse builder and to build a portfolio of prestigious partners.
A fleet of virtual workers with infinite scalability is now emerging. Didimo founder Veronica Costa Orvalho envisions a world where technology not only retains our humanity but enhances it. The rise of digital humans is not to be confused with the “didymo” species, an invasive algae that is to be prevented from spreading in our rivers. If you ever see a “didymo”, you are invited to contact the Ministry of Environment as soon as possible.
With the rise of the Alibaba breed of digital humans in China, the Chinese government has stated that digital humans need to be registered with their real-life human twin for identification. This will be a deterrent against scams and misinformation and means that data collected on platforms needs to be tied to users’ human identity.
Digital human twins do not die, even if their human counterpart dies. A recent podcast amazed listeners when they heard a live interview of Steve Jobs, even though he is dead. The Apple founder, who died in 2011, was recently interviewed in a podcast by the company Play.ht. The podcast used an AI model to resurrect Apple's co-founder. Listeners heard a resurrected Steve Jobs talk about his life before his death.
Ethical questions arise and include how humans will react to digital humans and whether they will trust in their opinions. Digital humans are created to mimic humans in a way that is indistinguishable from a real person, and it is difficult to imagine the conversations that may arise between the two species and the type of information that will be stored, as digital humans are not only listening, but they are able to collect and use the information obtained in unexpected ways. The Rise of Digital Humans is emerging, and the future is now.
Source: https://www.portugalbusinessesnews.com/post/digital-humans
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