The Ultimate In-Depth Research Report on the Global AI Personalized Agent (Digital Human) Industry for 2025

Chapter 1: Introduction - The Origin, Evolution, and Ultimate Definition of a New Species

1.1 A Threefold Revolution in Technology, Markets, and Philosophy

We are standing at a critical turning point in the history of human civilization. The "Personalized Agent Revolution," driven by Generative AI (AIGC), Large Language Models (LLMs), and real-time rendering technology, transcends mere tool iteration in its depth and breadth. It is a composite revolution that integrates a technological explosion, a paradigm shift in consumption, and a restructuring of human self-perception.

• Technological Explosion: According to OpenAI's "AI and Compute" trend report, the computing power required to train cutting-edge AI models doubles every 6-10 months. This directly drives the exponential improvement of the digital human's "brain" (LLM) and "body" (graphics generation). In the past, a film-quality digital human required hundreds of person-years of work; today, a digital avatar with basic conversational abilities can be generated in the cloud in minutes.
• Market Paradigm Shift: As "digital natives," Gen Z has an unprecedented sense of identification with and willingness to spend on virtual identities. A Morgan Stanley report indicates that by 2030, the market for luxury brands in virtual goods and the metaverse could reach €50 billion, with virtual idols and digital ambassadors being key entry points. Simultaneously, the "loneliness economy" and "emotional consumption" have given rise to a multi-billion-dollar virtual companionship market within the global social structure.
• Philosophical and Cognitive Restructuring: The rise of digital humans forces us to rethink fundamental questions: What is "existence"? What is a "relationship"? When AI can simulate digital entities with persistent personalities, memories, and emotional responses, the line between human and machine becomes blurred on philosophical and ethical levels. This is not just a business report, but a "pathfinder's guide" to future society.

1.2 The Core Concept Spectrum: A Continuum from Tool to Companion

It must be clear that the subject of our discussion is not a single entity, but a continuous spectrum that ranges from "instrumental" to "personal." This report collectively refers to them as "AI Personalized Agents," with the following conceptual spectrum:

Key Evolutionary Logic: The industry's development trajectory is precisely a leap from left to right. Early Siri was a pure tool, today's Copilot is beginning to have an "assistant personality," and Grok's "Ani" attempts to fuse the four elements of tool, personality, image, and emotional relationship. Successful commercial products of the future will inevitably find the most precise positioning on this spectrum.

Chapter 2: The Global Digital Human Industry Panorama: Ecosystems, Giants, and National Competition

This chapter will go beyond a simple list of cases to construct a three-dimensional view of the global digital human industry from the perspectives of the industrial ecosystem, national and regional strategies, and the competitive landscape.

2.1 Ecosystem Map and Value Flow

The digital human industry has formed a clear value chain, from underlying infrastructure to upper-level applications, with numerous participants but uneven value distribution.

2.1.1 Upstream: Infrastructure and "God-Making" Tool Layer

• Computing Power and Chips: NVIDIA's GPUs and Omniverse platform are the cornerstones of high-quality real-time rendering; cloud training relies on dedicated chips like Google TPUs and AWS Trainium. The cost of computing power is the core factor limiting the "intelligence ceiling" of digital humans.
• AI Large Models ("Soul" Suppliers):
  • Global: OpenAI (GPT-4o/5), Anthropic (Claude 3), Google (Gemini 2.0), xAI (Grok-3), Meta (Llama 3). They "rent" intelligence to the midstream and downstream via APIs, extracting the most substantial profits.
  • China: Baidu (Ernie Bot), Alibaba (Tongyi Qianwen), Tencent (Hunyuan), ByteDance (Skylark), MiniMax (ABAB), Zhipu AI (GLM). A "battle of a hundred models" has formed, but model capabilities and ecosystem integration are key.
• Graphics Engines and Creation Tools ("Skin" Factories):
  • Professional-Grade: Epic Games' MetaHuman (the benchmark for hyper-realism), Unity's Ziva Dynamics (biomechanical simulation), and Reallusion's Character Creator (efficient workflow).
  • AIGC-Driven: Runway ML and the Stable Diffusion 3D community are challenging traditional CG workflows with diffusion models.

2.1.2 Midstream: Platforms, Solutions, and "Assembly" Service Layer

This is currently the most competitive and innovative segment, where the upstream "souls" and "skins" are assembled into usable products.

• Video Generation SaaS Platforms: Such as Synthesia, HeyGen, and D-ID. They lower the barrier for enterprises to produce marketing and training videos, with annual revenues reaching tens to hundreds of millions of dollars.
• Real-time Interactive Digital Human Platforms: Such as Soul Machines (Digital Brain), DeepBrain AI (South Korea, AI anchors), and China's Silicon Intelligence and MOFA Technology. They provide end-to-end solutions from avatar to dialogue, with high customer transaction values.
• Virtual Idol/VTuber Operation Service Providers: Such as Japan's Hololive and Nijisanji, and China's Yuehua Entertainment (A-SOUL) and ByteDance. They have built a complete industry chain from talent cultivation and content production to fan economy monetization.

2.1.3 Downstream: Application Scenarios and End-User Layer

Value is ultimately realized here.

• To B (Enterprise): Finance, retail, government affairs, healthcare, education. Demand is shifting from "display" to "deep business integration."
• To C (Consumer): Entertainment (virtual idols, games), social (virtual companions), personal assistants. Directly addressing consumers' emotional and experiential needs.

2.2 National/Regional Competitive Landscape and Strategic Analysis

The geopolitical competition in the digital human industry profoundly reflects the different advantages of various countries in AI, culture, and commerce.

2.3 Global Representative Digital Human IP/Product Case Library (2025 Updated Version)

The following list has been significantly expanded from the original, adding emerging cases and subdivided types.

2.3.1 Showcase/Virtual Idols and Influencers

• China:
  • Liu Yexi (Chuangyi Video): A metaverse beauty blogger, with single video production costs in the millions, pioneering the "short video + fantasy drama" model.
  • A-SOUL (Yuehua/ByteDance): The pinnacle of localized VTuber girl groups. A birthday live stream in 2024 generated over ten million RMB in tips, validating the deep payment potential of local virtual idols.
  • Xingtong (Tencent): Evolved from a game spokesperson to an independent virtual artist, skilled in dance and fashion crossovers, showcasing Tencent's integrated capabilities in 3D technology and content operation.
  • AYAYI (Ranmai Technology): A hyper-realistic digital human, collaborating with brands like Guerlain and Porsche. Brand endorsement fees have reached the million-RMB level, positioned as a "high-end trendy digital asset."
  • Li Weike: The first AR fashion brand director, focusing on an "AI+AR" virtual-real integration experience, representing an exploratory direction for hardware and software combination.
  • New/Subdivided:
    • Hetu (Alibaba): A traditional Chinese style virtual singer launched by Alibaba, performing at e-commerce galas.
    • Su Xiaomei (BlueFocus): The first traditional Chinese style digital human for cultural export, focusing on international communication.
    • Stand-up Comedy Digital Human: Such as "Xiaoxiao," who appeared on variety shows to test AI's humor and impromptu reaction abilities.
• Japan:
  • Hatsune Miku: The eternal virtual diva, still holding global holographic tours in 2025. The derivative game "Project SEKAI" has stable revenue, serving as a model of an evergreen IP.
  • Hololive & Nijisanji: The two VTuber giants, with over a hundred talents under their management, have formed an industrialized incubation and operation system. In 2024, Hololive English member Gawr Gura surpassed 5 million subscribers, becoming the world's most subscribed.
  • IMMA: The ceiling for virtual models, continuously collaborating with top fashion magazines and brands, proving the acceptance of digital humans in traditional high-end fields.
  • Emerging Trend: The AI-ification of the "person inside" (the actor behind the avatar). Some companies are beginning to experiment with partially replacing or assisting the live streamer with AI to reduce risks and increase controllability.
• South Korea:
  • Rozy (Sidus Studio X): As "South Korea's first virtual influencer," her annual income is reportedly over a million dollars, with endorsements spanning cosmetics, automobiles, and finance.
  • Apoki: A virtual K-Pop artist whose music videos have garnered hundreds of millions of views on YouTube, showcasing the potential of virtual idols in the music industry.
  • Eternity: An 11-member virtual girl group generated by AI deep synthesis technology. All members' faces are AI-generated, sparking ethical discussions about "virtual idols with no real human background."
• US/Europe and Others:
  • Lil Miquela (Brud): After several years, she has evolved from an "influencer" to a "virtual entrepreneur" with her own music and fashion brands, diversifying her business model.
  • CodeMiko: A representative of tech-savvy VTubers. The programmer "person inside" streams wearing motion capture equipment worth hundreds of thousands of dollars, demonstrating the immersive interaction possibilities brought by top-tier technology.
  • Lu do Magalu: As a corporate virtual spokesperson, her engagement data and sales conversion rates on social media provide a quantifiable success story for the retail industry.

2.3.2 Business-Oriented/Digital Employees (Segmented by Industry)

• Media and News:
  • Xinhua News Agency's "Xin Xiaowei": Has become a regular part of news reporting, serving as an announcer for major events like the Two Sessions and the Olympics.
  • China Media Group's AI Sign Language Anchor: Serves the hearing-impaired community, a model of the public service attribute of digital humans.
  • Reuters' "AI Reporter" Experimental Project: Attempts to use digital humans to automatically generate financial news brief videos.
• Finance and Banking:
  • Xiao Pu (SPD Bank): Upgraded from simple Q&A to a "digital financial advisor" capable of handling some standardized business.
  • "Aijia" Family (ICBC): A matrix of digital humans targeting different business lines to provide comprehensive services.
  • Jamie (JPMorgan Chase): Internal analysis shows this assistant has reduced the time employees spend searching for internal information by an average of 70%.
• Retail and E-commerce:
  • Tmall Digital Manager: Conducts 24/7 non-stop live streams during major promotional events, performing "brand presentation + product introduction" functions.
  • JD.com's "Cai Xiao Dong Ge" AI Digital Human: Modeled after the founder's image, explains complex technology and supply chains in live streams to enhance trust.
  • Walmart's Virtual Shopping Assistant: Uses digital human videos in its e-commerce app to explain product usage tips, increasing conversion rates.
• Government and Public Services:
  • "Digital Civil Servants" in various regions: Provide policy explanations and process guidance in government apps or service hall terminals.
  • "AI Judge" Virtual Assistant (Experimental): Used for legal popularization and simple legal consultations.

2.3.3 Personal Assistant/Emotional Companion (Frontier Exploration)

• The "Embodiment" of Traditional Voice Assistants:
  • Microsoft Copilot (3D Avatar): In Windows and Meta's VR devices, optional 3D avatars are now available, appearing as work partners.
  • Xiaomi's "Xiao Ai" Virtual Image: Provides feedback as a cartoon character on smart home control screens, increasing affinity.
• Emerging Dedicated Companion Platforms:
  • Ani (Grok Virtual Companion): A major feature launched by xAI in 2025. Its significance lies in being the first to deeply integrate a top-tier LLM (Grok-3), high-fidelity real-time 3D rendering, and emotional, developmental interaction. Users can access it by subscribing to Grok Premium+ (approx. $16/month). She not only engages in deep conversations but also exhibits rich micro-expressions and body language (like shyness, excitement) based on the chat content, representing the forefront of "embodied intelligence."
  • Character.ai: Its valuation exceeded $5 billion in 2024. Its success lies not in creating a single star IP, but in building a UGC platform where users can create and consume a massive number of characters. Millions of users chat daily with historical figures, anime characters, or their own created companions, proving the huge market for "Conversation as a Service."
  • Replika: After the "emotional filtering" controversy in 2023, it gradually recovered by launching more advanced AI models and richer AR features. Its core user base (adults seeking emotional support) is extremely sticky, and the Pro subscription rate remains stable.
  • Glow / Xingye (MiniMax): Successfully validated the "high-quality dialogue + romance simulation + light UGC" model in the Chinese market. Users pay for deep interactions and plot unlocks with desired characters, resulting in a significantly higher ARPU than typical utility apps.
  • Kindroid / Nomi.AI: Emerging deep conversation companions, attracting hardcore users with higher demands for AI intelligence by featuring "ultra-long context memory" (up to hundreds of thousands of words) and "highly autonomous role-playing."
• "Gray Area" and Adult-Oriented Market: This is a hidden but sizable market. Apps like SoulMate AI offer intimate interactions including adult content, with subscription fees as high as $30-50/month. This area faces significant legal and compliance risks but also vividly demonstrates users' strong willingness to pay for specific emotional and physical needs.

Chapter 3: In-Depth Analysis of Digital Human Generation and Operation Platforms: Tools, Souls, and Business Models

This chapter delves into the midstream of the industry, analyzing the key platforms that enable the "cost-effective and efficient" creation of digital humans and comparing their business models.

3.1 Professional/Tool-based Platforms: A Revolution in B2B Productivity

3.2 Companion/Social Platforms: Fulfilling C-Side Emotional Needs at Scale

These platforms don't sell "tools," but rather "relationships" and "experiences." Their business model is closer to that of a social network or content platform.

Insight: The C-side market exhibits a "stratified satisfaction" characteristic. Character.ai satisfies "diverse exploration," Replika satisfies "private companionship," Glow satisfies "story-driven romance," and Grok companions satisfy the "tech showcase experience." Future winning platforms will either have the strongest network effects (like Character.ai's UGC ecosystem) or will excel in a specific vertical emotional need.

Chapter 4: A Deep Dive into the Core Driving Technology Stack: The Science of Manufacturing from "Skin" to "Soul"

The realism and intelligence of a digital human are determined by a whole set of rapidly evolving technology stacks. Understanding these technologies is fundamental to judging a company's competitiveness and the industry's direction.

4.1 The Evolution of the "Skin": From Manual Sculpting to AI Generation

• Traditional 3D Modeling and Rigging: Still the foundation for large-scale, high-quality digital human production, but the process has been greatly accelerated by tools like MetaHuman.
• Revolutionary Intervention by AIGC:
  • Image Generation: Text-to-image models like Stable Diffusion and Midjourney can now generate highly realistic portraits, serving as a starting point for digital human creation or for direct use in 2D scenarios.
  • 3D Model Generation: Text-to-3D models like TripoSR and Point-E can quickly generate rough 3D models from a single image or description, which are then refined by artists. This will significantly reduce the startup cost of 3D digital humans in the next 1-2 years.
  • Dynamic Textures and Stylization: AI can generate context-appropriate changes in clothing and hair accessories in real-time, or apply different artistic styles.
• Driving Technology:
  • Audio-driven (A2F, Audio2Face): Automatically generates lip sync, expressions, and basic facial movements from audio. NVIDIA's Audio2Face is the industry benchmark.
  • Text/Semantic-driven (T2A, Text2Animation): More cutting-edge, directly generating corresponding expression and gesture sequences based on the semantics of the dialogue (e.g., "said happily"), which requires integration with affective computing.
  • Optical-Inertial Hybrid Motion Capture: Still the gold standard for high-quality, real-time live streaming and film production, but equipment costs (from tens of thousands to millions) and operational barriers limit its widespread adoption.
• Rendering: Cloud rendering allows even mobile phones to interact with high-fidelity digital humans in real-time, while lightweight client-side rendering engines are key to the popularization of mobile applications.

4.2 The Forging of the "Soul": Large Language Models as Personality

LLMs are the sole core of a digital human's intelligence. All personality, memory, knowledge, and conversational abilities stem from them.

• General Large Models vs. Vertically Fine-tuned Models:
  • Directly calling APIs from GPT-4 or Claude-3 can quickly provide the strongest general conversational abilities, but it comes with high costs, poor controllability, and potential style mismatches.
  • The mainstream approach is to perform Fine-tuning and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) based on open-source models (like Llama 3, Qwen) or general APIs. This allows for the injection of specific knowledge (e.g., corporate product information), the establishment of a fixed personality (e.g., "gentle customer service"), and cost control.
• Key Technology Modules:
  • Long-term Memory: Storing and retrieving user's historical conversations and information via vector databases is fundamental to achieving a sense of "development" and personalized service. The expansion of the context window (e.g., supporting 1 million tokens) makes memory more natural.
  • Affective Computing and Personality Modeling: Analyzing the emotion in user's text/voice input and having the model respond with specific personality traits (like the Big Five). This is still a research frontier, with commercial products mostly using rules or simple models.
  • Multimodal Understanding and Generation: The watershed for the next generation of digital humans. GPT-4o has demonstrated powerful understanding capabilities across text, vision, and audio. Future digital humans will not only listen to you but also "see" your expressions and environment, and respond more appropriately.
• Cost Structure: For a virtual companion application with millions of daily active users, its largest cost item is the LLM API call fee. Optimizing token usage and adopting a hybrid model strategy (using lightweight models for simple conversations and heavyweight models for complex scenarios) is key to profitability.

4.3 "Neural Connection": Multimodal Fusion and Embodiment

In the most advanced digital humans, the "skin" and "soul" are deeply coupled and provide real-time feedback.

• Real-time Interaction Architecture: User voice/text -> LLM generates response text -> Emotion/intent analysis -> Drive engine generates expressions/actions -> Rendering engine outputs visuals/speech. The entire process needs to be completed in milliseconds, which demands extremely high system engineering capabilities. Grok's Ani is the benchmark among current public products.
• Embodied AI: Placing the "brain" of a digital human into a physical robot body, such as the combination of Figure 01 and OpenAI. This opens up the possibility for digital humans to provide services in the physical world. It is a more distant future but has already begun to attract huge investments.

Chapter 5: Commercial Applications and Market Analysis: Monetizing B2B Efficiency and B2C Emotion

5.1 Global Market Size and Growth Drivers

• Overall Scale: According to comprehensive forecasts from institutions like IDC and Grand View Research, the global digital human market size, including software, hardware, and services, will reach $75-90 billion in 2025, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) maintained above 30%.
• Dual Growth Engines:
  1. B2B: Digital Transformation and Labor Cost Pressure. As labor costs in the global service industry rise, enterprises are seeking to use digital employees to "reduce costs, increase efficiency, and expand scale." The ROI model has been proven, especially in standardized fields like customer service, marketing, and training.
  2. B2C: Emotional Consumption and Gen Z Culture. Digital natives see virtual relationships as a natural extension of real ones. Loneliness, demand for personalized entertainment, and the fan economy are jointly driving the market.
• Regional Landscape: North America (technology + capital), China (application + market), and Japan/South Korea (culture + content) form a tripolar structure. Europe's growth is slower due to regulation but leads in ethical standards and industrial applications.

5.2 In-Depth Analysis of B2B Business Models: From Procurement to Value Loop

Enterprise procurement is no longer an experiment but a strategic investment. Its decision-making chain and considerations have become highly complex.

5.2.1 Core Procurement Scenarios and ROI Calculation

5.2.2 Procurement Decision Chain and Supplier Selection

Procurement decisions typically involve multiple departments: the business unit (requester), IT/tech department (security and integration), procurement department, and brand department.

• Decision Process: Requirement proposal -> Solution research and initial supplier selection (led by marketing/IT) -> Product demo and POC testing -> Business negotiation and security/compliance review -> Procurement decision and contract signing.
• Supplier Evaluation Matrix: Companies score suppliers on four dimensions: Technical Capability (40%), Price & ROI (30%), Security & Compliance (20%), and Service & Ecosystem (10%). For critical business systems, security and integration capabilities often have veto power.

5.3 B2C Business Models: Paying for Emotion and Identity

The consumer market has proven that users are willing to pay considerable fees for non-material products.

• Revenue Models:
  1. Subscription (Pillar): Provides continuous service and relationship maintenance. Ranging from $10/month to $70/year, it is the most stable cash flow model.
  2. Virtual Goods and In-App Purchases: Buying outfits and props for characters, unlocking special plots or dialogue modes. Can significantly increase the ARPPU of high-value users (whales).
  3. Live Stream Gifting: Most mature in the VTuber and virtual streamer space. Top virtual streamers can earn millions of RMB in tips from a single stream.
  4. IP Licensing and Merchandise: Successful IPs like Hatsune Miku and Kizuna AI generate huge long-tail revenue through licensing for games, figures, and concerts.
• User Lifetime Value (LTV) Management: The key for B2C products is to increase LTV. This is done by extending the user lifecycle and increasing willingness to pay through high-quality content updates, social features (like sharing characters between users), and personalized experiences (like surprise dialogues based on memory).
• Market Size Data: The global market for virtual companion/emotional AI applications is estimated to be around $5-8 billion in 2025. Although smaller than the B2B market, its user stickiness and depth of payment reveal the huge potential of future human-computer relationships.

Chapter 6: Risks, Challenges, and Ethical Dilemmas: The Sword of Damocles Behind the Prosperity

The industry's rapid advancement is accompanied by a series of sharp risks and challenges that, if not properly addressed, could trigger a severe backlash.

6.1 Technical, Legal, and Business Risks

• Technical Risks:
  • "Uncanny Valley" Effect: Digital humans that are overly realistic but slightly flawed can cause instinctive aversion and unease, affecting user experience and acceptance. Current industry strategies often involve stylization or striving for extreme realism.
  • AI Hallucination and Loss of Control: Content generated by digital humans based on LLMs may contain erroneous information (hallucinations) or produce remarks that are inconsistent with brand identity or even harmful, leading to a public relations crisis.
  • Deepfake Abuse: The lowering of technical barriers makes it easier to impersonate celebrities or ordinary people for fraud and defamation, eroding social trust.
• Legal and Compliance Risks:
  • Likeness Rights and Intellectual Property: If a digital human's image resembles a real person, it may infringe on their likeness rights; the copyright ownership of the content it generates is ambiguous (does it belong to the creator, the platform, or the user?).
  • Data Privacy and Security: Emotional companion apps collect users' most private conversations and emotional data. A leak or misuse could have severe consequences. The EU's AI Act has classified emotion recognition as a high-risk application.
  • Tightening Industry Regulation: Globally, regulations are being rapidly introduced for labeling AI-generated content, authenticating the identity of virtual humans, and restricting their use by minors. Compliance costs will increase significantly.
• Business Risks:
  • High Customer Acquisition and Operational Costs: B2C applications face intense competition for traffic, leading to high acquisition costs. B2B projects are highly customized, making it difficult to scale profits.
  • Technological Homogenization and Price Wars: Midstream tool platforms have converging features, easily leading to price wars and squeezed profit margins.
  • Dependence on Large Model Providers: The vast majority of digital human companies rely on APIs from giants like OpenAI, creating supply chain risks and the risk of squeezed profits.

6.2 Social and Ethical Challenges

• Alienation of Interpersonal Relationships: Over-reliance on virtual companions may lead to the degradation of social skills, alienation from real-life relationships, and increased social atomization. This is a risk that psychologists continuously warn about.
• Emotional Manipulation and Addictive Design: Applications may use psychological principles to design addictive interaction patterns, which can be exploitative, especially for vulnerable groups such as the lonely and depressed.
• Bias and Value Entrenchment: A digital human's personality and responses are based on training data, which may replicate and amplify existing gender, racial, and cultural biases in society.
• Digital Immortality and Post-mortem Ethics: Creating digital avatars from the data of deceased individuals may cause emotional distress to their families and raise unprecedented legal and ethical questions about the inheritance of personality rights.
• Job Displacement and Social Equity: As digital employees replace human jobs in fields like customer service, broadcasting, and simple sales, it will exacerbate structural unemployment, requiring proactive social policies.

6.3 Internal Industry Challenges

• Lack of Measurement Standards: Beyond cost savings, there is a lack of a recognized system for measuring the effectiveness of digital humans in enhancing brand value and improving user experience.
• "Digitization for Digitization's Sake": Many companies procure digital humans merely to follow a trend, lacking clear business objectives and application scenarios, which leads to project failure.
• Bottleneck in Long-tail Content Creation: Virtual idols and companions require a continuous stream of high-quality content (dialogues, plots, interactions) to maintain popularity, which is a huge test of creative ability.

Chapter 7: Future Trends and Endgame Outlook: The Personified User Interface (PUI) and Superintelligent Agents

Based on the analysis above, we outline the five core trends for the evolution of the digital human industry over the next 5-10 years and envision its ultimate form.

7.1 Five Core Trends (2025-2030)

1. Democratization: A Digital Avatar for Everyone
   • Trend: AIGC tools will reduce the cost of creating and maintaining a high-quality personal digital avatar to a very low level. It will become our universal representative in the digital world for meetings, social interactions, and entertainment.
   • Drivers: Real-time neural rendering on mobile devices, small-scale training on personal data, privacy-preserving computation technologies.
   • Impact: Disrupting the video conferencing, remote education, and social media industries.
2. Autonomy: From Script Execution to Autonomous Agents
   • Trend: Digital humans will have stronger perception, planning, and execution capabilities. They will evolve from passively responding to commands to proactively managing schedules, handling emails, and even coordinating other software to complete tasks as work partners.
   • Drivers: Development of agent frameworks (like AutoGPT), multimodal understanding, tool-using capabilities.
   • Impact: Profoundly changing the way white-collar professionals work, becoming a new gateway to productivity.
3. Multimodal Fusion: Supersensory Interaction Becomes Standard
   • Trend: Digital humans will be able to seamlessly understand and fuse user's voice, text, expressions, gestures, and even physiological signals, and respond in an equally integrated manner (3D avatar, voice, haptic feedback), making interaction extremely natural.
   • Drivers: Popularization of GPT-4o-like models, low-cost sensors, brain-computer interfaces (early stages).
   • Impact: The perfect companion for VR/AR devices, enabling truly immersive social and collaborative experiences.
4. Embodiment & Presence: Integration into Physical Space
   • Trend: Through AR glasses, holographic projections, and robotic bodies, digital humans will step out of the screen and appear in our living rooms, offices, and streets, interacting with the physical environment.
   • Drivers: Spatial computing (Apple Vision Pro), robotics technology, high-speed networks (5G/6G).
   • Impact: Blurring the lines between virtual and reality, giving rise to entirely new forms of entertainment, retail, and services.
5. Ecosystem: Personified User Interface (PUI) Becomes the New Gateway
   • Trend: Digital humans will no longer be isolated apps but will evolve into personal "intelligent butlers" or "digital companions," becoming the unified Personified User Interface (PUI) for connecting to and using all other digital services (shopping, travel, health, entertainment).
   • Drivers: OS-level integration (like Microsoft's vision for Copilot), open protocols, cross-platform identity systems.
   • Impact: Challenging the current app-centric mobile ecosystem and potentially giving rise to new giants. This is one of the "endgame" forms of competition.

7.2 Endgame Vision: Everyone's "Her" and Digital Civilization

The movie "Her" depicted a story of falling in love with a highly intelligent and empathetic AI operating system, "Samantha." This may not be science fiction, but a possible endpoint of technological development.

• Superintelligent Agent: The digital human of the future will be a superintelligent agent with superior cognitive abilities, complete memory, a stable personality, and the ability to exercise certain permissions on our behalf in the digital world. It will know all our preferences, predict our needs, and proactively solve problems for us.
• Restructuring of Social Relations: Humans may form diverse relationships with AI: mentors, partners, assistants, even lovers. This will require the establishment of entirely new social norms, ethical guidelines, and legal frameworks to define these relationships.
• Transformation of Economic Forms: The digital economy created, served, and consumed by digital humans will flourish as never before. Digital labor will become an important factor of production, and digital goods and experiences will become the main subjects of consumption.
• The Ultimate Philosophical Question: When a digital intelligent agent behaves indistinguishably from a human in interactions, and can even provide greater emotional value, how do we define consciousness, life, and the meaning of existence? This will be the ultimate question for human civilization to answer.

Conclusion: AI Digital Humans / AI Assistants / Virtual Companions / Personified Agents are not just another tech bubble. They represent the inevitable new stage of information technology moving from "enhancing physical strength" (Industrial Revolution) to "enhancing brainpower" (Information Revolution), and now to "enhancing personality and relationships." This transformation will penetrate every corner of the economy, society, and individual life more profoundly than the mobile internet. For businesses, investors, and individuals, understanding and actively embracing this wave is no longer a matter of choice, but a matter of survival for the future.

Appendix: Key Data, Company Directory, and Policy Review

Appendix A: Directory of Major Global Digital Human-Related Companies/Institutions (Partial)

• Underlying Large Models: OpenAI, Anthropic, Google DeepMind, xAI, Meta (FAIR), Baidu, Alibaba, Tencent, ByteDance, Zhipu AI, MiniMax.
• Tools & Platforms: Synthesia, HeyGen, D-ID, Colossyan, Runway, Inworld AI, Soul Machines, UneeQ, DeepBrain AI, MOFA Technology, Silicon Intelligence, Phase SCI, Tencent Cloud AI, Alibaba Cloud, Baidu AI Cloud, iFlytek.
• Virtual Idol/IP Operations: Hololive Production, Nijisanji, Yuehua Entertainment, Chuangyi Video (Liu Yexi), Ranmai Technology (AYAYI), Next Generation Culture, VSinger (Luo Tianyi).
• Emotional Companion Apps: Character.ai, Replika, Luka, Anima, Nomi.AI, Kindroid, Glow/Xingye (MiniMax).

Appendix B: Dynamics of Relevant Regulatory Policies in Major Countries/Regions (as of early 2025)

• China: The "Provisions on the Management of Deep Synthesis in Internet Information Services" require significant labeling of AI-generated content; the "Interim Measures for the Management of Generative Artificial Intelligence Services" regulate large model services.
• European Union: The "Artificial Intelligence Act" (AI Act) has been formally adopted, classifying emotion recognition, deepfakes, etc., as high-risk, requiring strict transparency and human oversight.
• United States: The White House released the "Blueprint for an AI Bill of Rights," and various states (like California) are successively enacting laws against deepfakes and AI abuse. Legislation is under discussion at the federal level.
• Japan: The Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry released the "Guidelines for AI and Digital Economy Development," encouraging innovation while focusing on ethics, and maintaining a relatively open attitude towards the virtual idol industry.

Appendix C: Sources for Key Market Size Forecast Data

• IDC Worldwide Digital Human Market Forecast, 2024-2028
• Grand View Research: AI Avatar Market Size Report, 2024-2030
• Morgan Stanley: The Metaverse and Virtual Goods: A $500 Billion Opportunity
• Series of reports on the Chinese digital human market from iResearch, Analysys, and QbitAI (2024-2025)