A MARTÍNEZ, HOST:
Do you sometimes wish you could just clone yourself to get all your work done? Well, companies in China now offer to do that. They create digital avatars of real people using generative AI. Here's NPR's Emily Feng.
WANG XUE'ER: (Speaking Mandarin).
EMILY FENG, BYLINE: This is 28-year-old live streamer Wang Xue'er, online advertising mooncakes.
WANG: (Speaking Mandarin).
FENG: But hold on, on another e-commerce channel, she's also simultaneously selling a toaster. How is that possible? Turns out, the real flesh and blood Wang is actually sitting in a studio, telling the digital versions of herself what to say for the next day's live streaming. And all those other online versions of her, some of them are avatars generated by artificial intelligence.
WANG: (Speaking Mandarin).
FENG: She says she used to livestream four to six hours a day, talking nonstop in front of a camera and engaging with customers asking questions. Then Wang's marketing agency turned to Silicon Intelligence. That's an AI company based in the city of Nanjing who digitally copied Wang. And now she can run five to 10 e-commerce livestreams at a time.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Speaking Mandarin).
FENG: Silicon Intelligence showed NPR's producer Aowen Cao how they make digital avatars. Aowen stands in front of a green screen while someone barks out directions as they film.
UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Speaking Mandarin).
FENG: The company needs about one hour of high-definition video of her from all sides and a voice recording of about 100 stock phrases. Aowen decided not to digitally clone herself this time around, but avatars can be lucrative.
WANG: (Speaking Mandarin).
FENG: Wang says in the last 18 months, her avatars have sold about $15 million worth of goods online. And unlike real people, these avatars, what companies dub silicon labor in China, can work 24/7 and they don't have to be paid. So, as China's working-age population declines due to slowing birth rates, this silicon labor could, in theory, fill part of an impending labor shortage.
SIMA HUAPENG: (Speaking Mandarin).
FENG: This is Sima Huapeng, the CEO of Silicon Intelligence. His ambition is to create 100 million digital avatars.
HUAPENG: (Speaking Mandarin).
FENG: He says he wants to create AI lawyers and doctors.
HUAPENG: (Speaking Mandarin).
FENG: And he shows us how he also created an AI avatar of his son to preserve a cuter version of him, Sima says.
AI-GENERATED VOICE #1: (As Sima's son, speaking Mandarin).
HUAPENG: (Speaking Mandarin).
FENG: Sima explains...
HUAPENG: (Speaking Mandarin).
FENG: ...His son is now quite rebellious and doesn't really want to talk to him, so Sima cloned his son. Silicon Intelligence has also signed contracts with big marketing agencies and a number of China's biggest online news outlets.
AI-GENERATED VOICE #2: (As news anchor, speaking Mandarin).
FENG: Like this one, owned by a Shanghai media group. Now, an AI avatar of the main news anchors host their daily morning show, and the real hosts can sleep in. There's a reason we don't do that at NPR, though. There's the issue of credibility and of ethics. This technology is all so new that China does not yet mandate a media outlet or e-commerce site to tell the public when something is AI-generated. Deep fakes also proliferate, used to scam people or to spread misinformation. And there's no clear legal answer on who owns the rights to AI avatars.
KATARZYNA NOWACZYK-BASINSKA: On how to use data, it's primarily arbitrary decision that is made by commercial companies.
FENG: This is Katarzyna Nowaczyk-Basinska, a research associate who writes on AI ethics at the University of Cambridge.
NOWACZYK-BASINSKA: You just consent to create your simulation, and the company, commercial company is the owner of this.
FENG: Which means there's also no requirement that the profits of an avatar's labor go back to the person it was modeled after. Silicon labor is not ready to replace humans entirely. Advanced lifelike avatars still cost thousands of dollars to make.
WANG: (Speaking Mandarin).
FENG: And so Wang Xue'er, the live streamer, says it is actually still far cheaper to simply hire a real person to wear a digital filter of her face and voice than livestream looking and sounding like her. This kind of intermediary stand-in performer is now a whole new job category for humans to do on Chinese job boards. And so, while generative AI has reduced the workload for humans, it's also created a whole new type of work for humans to do.
Emily Feng, NPR News.
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