The virtual vloggers taking over YouTube
A young Japanese woman sporting a giant pink bow and white opera gloves looks into the camera and gleefully greets her YouTube audience. She's about to try and solve a puzzle. Before diving into the game, she boasts with a smile: "Well, compared to all you humans, I can clear it much faster. No doubt about it!"
Yes, this YouTube personality isn't a real person. While she's voiced by a human, she's a digital, anime-style cartoon. Her name is Kizuna Ai, and she has more than two million subscribers to her channel. She's the most-watched "virtual YouTuber" on the site. Kizuna Ai is part of an emerging trend where 3D avatars – rather than humans – are becoming celebrities on YouTube, with dedicated fanbases and corporate deals. It's becoming so popular that one company is investing tens of millions in "virtual talent" and talent agencies are being established to manage these avatars.
It's a movement that has big implications for the future – it could change how brands market their products and how we interact with technology. It could even let us live forever.
Yes, that's right. It could let you "live" forever. The true immortality: being remembered only as an anime girl.
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A 3D Hentai Camgirl Is Taking Over Chaturbate, and Human Models Are Worried (probably NSFW)
A 3D anime woman with a black strap across her nipples is giving a lecture on YouTube about whether hentai is art or porn. "I think there's a higher demand for the odd and the fantastical," she says. "With art, it's flexible, you're allowed to explore your sexuality. And with real titties? No offense, but it's bound to the cruel weight of science, gravity, and bones that only go one way."
ProjektMelody is a virtual avatar of a woman who claims to be the world's first hentai camgirl. When she's not on YouTube, she gives regular, live shows on the camming site Chaturbate, where she dances and fondles herself for tips. She's not real, but there's a real person in there somewhere, moving her arms and speaking into a microphone to any of her 14,300 followers currently in the live chat. She only started streaming three days ago.
On Chaturbate, her location is listed as "Virtual Little Tokyo," and under smoking and drinking preferences, "literally impossible." Her birthdate is listed as July 7, 2000, but more accurately, Melody came into the world in July 2019, when ProjektMelody joined Twitter.
In the last three days since her first stream, Melody has gone from 700 Twitter followers to more than 20,000. The "more rooms like this" tab on her Chaturbate page returns an error: "Sorry, we don't have any rooms similar to projektmelody yet." That's because other cam models are human. Her sudden rise in popularity has made some who aren't working behind a full-body avatar question what place an anime avatar has on the platform.
Motion capture technology is used to animate the virtual troublemaker.
There is a Projekt Melody channel on YouTube.
Related: Gatebox: Your New Holographic AI Assistant "Waifu"
A Different Kind of Virtual Reality, or "Only in Japan" (Hatsune Miku)
The Virtual Vloggers "Taking Over" YouTube
(Score: 3, Funny) by Phoenix666 on Friday October 05 2018, @01:49PM
You mean all the anime girls in school uniforms are really bearded men named Phil in Cleveland?
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Friday October 05 2018, @02:00PM (5 children)
It's not that there is nothing here, of course there is. But it's being almost painted like it's some kind of novel revolution. It's very little different from animation, and virtually identical to rotoscoping with dubbing just on a computer. In fact, it is just a form of animation process. This isn't some sort of "AI's are taking over" like the BBC article is inferring but not explicitly stating. In short, it's PR-spin.
It may still merit discussion as a popular phenomenon - do people prefer this and if so why? But no, it won't let us live forever any differently than regular vlogging.
Come back to me when the AI is making its own coherent posts of it's own free will. Which will requiring giving AI free will, first.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @02:43PM (1 child)
I hope AI will be intelligent enough to never sign up for a Google account.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @08:00AM
How well AI get an email address and a mobile phone number so it can prove it is human?
Can it solve a recaptcha?
Would an ai care about humans?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by nobu_the_bard on Friday October 05 2018, @04:20PM (1 child)
Its not that unique. The specific technology is new-ish. The context may be new.
There are many characters in various places that have long outlived the original creators. The Muppets are a somewhat recent example - Big Bird's still going strong, Seasame Street's still around. People are still writing books, shows, plays, and stories for characters that have been around a long time, perhaps not real often always - Sherlock Holmes, Punch and Judy, Romeo and Juliet, etc.
I wonder - when does a character transition from being a singular occurrence into an archetype?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @08:23PM
More and more dead actors show up in ads thanks to clever editing of old recordings.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Osamabobama on Friday October 05 2018, @08:31PM
How many steps removed is this from Red vs. Blue? That was also computer animation voiced by a cast of humans. Of course the graphics and animation are better now, but that's to be expected.
The worst trend I've seen on YouTube is where the computer does the voice, while the video is from a traditional camera.
Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @02:41PM (1 child)
considering how much click bait is thrown on Youtube. I swear, you click ONE video featuring woman in a bikini, and for the next week all you get in your suggested videos is ass floss.
Searching for a chocalate bar? Ass floss. Searching for a review on a welding rig? Ass floss. Searching for a commentary on legal code? Ass floss.
Youtube and indeed Google equate new and click count with good. Which is hardly accurate when you are talking about anything important. There is only one or two really good video on how to do a valve adjustment or your particular car. But if it is new, and features ass floss, you get that first. There are a lot of videos on youtube by really skilled guys, who do 30 or 40 videos, and then sign off with "fuck it, this isn't worth it", because they get less play than the tart dejour.
So it follows that if the AI is there to make studying physics while looking at eye candy at the same time functional, that is what people will do for their 2 cent kickback. It is a cultural trend manufactured by a bad algo, appearently designed for the purpose of making bad culture. Of course that describes most big-corp content.
(Score: 2, Funny) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @03:46PM
...you write that as if it were a bad thing.
(Score: 2) by Kilo110 on Friday October 05 2018, @02:48PM (3 children)
I remember being astonished that an animated character that sings was selling out music concerts.
I don't remember its name but I'm pretty sure it's also a Japanese thing.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @03:21PM (1 child)
Those would be the vocaloids, of which the most well known is Hatsune Miku. To think they've been around for over 10 years now! Quite a novelty at the time too, I even remember playing around with the software to make it sing whatever I wanted it to.
(Score: 2) by shortscreen on Friday October 05 2018, @07:19PM
thread not complete without Sharon Apple [wikipedia.org]
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @05:38PM
Is there really all that much difference between an animated character who sings, and the supposedly 'real' humans who get on stage and sing?
Yes, the humans have biological functions; but I mean from the point of view of the audience. The singers up on stage, like Madonna, or Pink, or whomever is hot these days (yes, I'm showing my age here), what is shown up on the stage is a carefully crafted fiction. It's their persona that's before the audience, and personas are managed and massaged.
So from the audience's point of view, what's the difference? Good music is still good music, isn't it? Isn't the "concert experience" the same? (I admit that I don't know myself, as I abhor being in large groups of people, so I've never been to a concert)
(Score: 5, Insightful) by requerdanos on Friday October 05 2018, @03:01PM (3 children)
A cartoon voiced by a person, uploaded to YT as a digital media file. Where have I seen something like that before? Think, think, think.
Since Scooby-Doo is also a cartoon voiced by a person, our canine cartoon friend can help us evaluate the gushing claims of this story by applying the "Scooby-Doo Test": Using Scooby-Doo's name in place of the alleged gee-whiz alleged brand-new alleged disruptive cartoon they are swooning about and making sure their ideas still make sense.
Please put on your safety glasses. Here we go:
1. "Scooby-Doo has more than two million subscribers."
Result: Hype detected. While cool, Scooby is not earth-shaking, and not a new thing (his first cartoons came out the year I was born, and that wasn't recently). The three top-viewed videos-featuring-Scooby on YouTube have a combined quarter of a billion (with a "b") views. Yawn.
2. "Scooby-Doo is a virtual YouTuber."
Result: Nonsense detected. Even if Scooby were audio-edited to break the fourth wall, as the cartoon in TFS seems to do, that would not make him a "virtual" anything. Like the cartoon in question, he is a cartoon.
3. "Scooby-Doo is part of an emerging trend where 3D avatars – rather than humans – are becoming celebrities on YouTube"
Result: Nonsense detected. Scooby-Doo has been popular for almost fifty years. This means that cartoons have been popular for at least that long. They are not an "emerging trend". They are not "3D" in any meaningful sense, save that they are two-dimensional cartoon representations of a three-dimensional cartoon universe (as is any cartoon).
4. "Scooby-Doo is a movement that has big implications for the future."
Result: Nonsense detected. Cartoons are cartoons, and have been for a long time.
5. "Scooby-Doo could change how brands market their products (with big implications)"
Result: Nonsense detected. Sure, brands market with cartoons sometimes, but the occasional Joe Camel doesn't mean that cartoons have nor will turn marketing on its head.
6. "Scooby-Doo could change how we interact with technology (with big implications)"
Result: Nonsense detected. Sure, someone could design an interface that communicated with a user by Scooby-Doo saying "rut-roh Raggy" when an error occurs, for example, but this hardly has big implications for technology interaction.
7. "Scooby-Doo could even let us live forever."
Result: Nonsense (surprise!) detected. Scooby-Doo is not--cartoons are not--a vehicle by which human life occurs nor is preserved.
Thank you for attending today's testing. You are encouraged to discuss the results.
(Score: 1) by shrewdsheep on Friday October 05 2018, @03:39PM (2 children)
You missed one thing: With Scooby-Doo the drooling is on the animation side, whereas with the hot-chick Anime the drooling happens IRL.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Friday October 05 2018, @04:01PM (1 child)
Well... Let's apply the "other" Scooby-Doo test.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @06:14PM
Anime is far more attractive, though.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by YeaWhatevs on Friday October 05 2018, @04:20PM (1 child)
But are the ad dollars real?
(Score: 2) by takyon on Friday October 05 2018, @04:43PM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphabet_Inc. [wikipedia.org]
Revenue: US$110.86 billion (2017)
Given that most of their revenue comes from ads, they probably made at least $100 billion off of ads in 2017 or 2018.
I'm surprised the house of ads hasn't fallen yet.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @06:53PM
and cause all who refused to worship it to be killed
For this reason, God sends them a powerful delusion(operation of wandering)(planet) so that they will believe the lie.
cloudflare-ipfs.com [cloudflare-ipfs.com]
(Score: 2) by Kalas on Friday October 05 2018, @07:18PM (2 children)
Sure there are a bajillion ways I can pretend with a computer, but when will science actually let me BE the cute anime girl? (Preferably with cat ears and a fluffy tail.)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday October 05 2018, @07:46PM (1 child)
From TFS:
I think I would rather die than be immortalized as an anime girl. YMMV.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Friday October 05 2018, @11:57PM
Those two things aren't mutually exclusive.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday October 06 2018, @07:50PM
Evan fake CGI people are more interesting and have more personality than the current lot of loser meatbags on youtube.