On November 28, the "2024 Sohu Finance Annual Forum" was held in Beijing.

The Sohu Finance Annual Forum has grown into Sohu's annual brand event. Over the years, the forum has always adhered to a forward-looking vision, gathered wisdom and strength, and recorded and promoted every leap of China's economy.

This forum brought together more than 20 business elites and academic leaders. They sincerely took the pulse of the economic situation and discussed the world order; analyzed the real estate market structure and looked forward to investment opportunities in the capital market; focused on industrial innovation and market expansion under a global perspective, and offered suggestions for the sustainable development of enterprises.

With the rise of the concept of the metaverse, digital human technology has become the key to promoting the high-quality development of the digital economy. At the forum on the morning of November 28, Jiang Yahong, a national leading talent and founder and CEO of UStyle Times, gave a keynote speech - real 3D digital human are the "pass" to enter the metaverse.

He said that the most important and core thing in the metaverse is that everyone must have their own real 3D digital human. Only with digital human can we truly experience the similarity between the metaverse and the real world.

With the help of the self-developed 3D cloud array camera, Jiang Yahong also vividly demonstrated the leading achievements of UStyle Times in real 3D digital human technology in his sharing, and looked forward to the wide application prospects of digital human in cultural tourism, colleges and universities, games, film and television, and other fields, as well as the revolutionary impact on future work and life.

"This camera takes only 1 second to shoot, and can create a 3D digital avatar that is exactly the same as a real person in as fast as 5 minutes, and it can reach the application level of the metaverse, and the cost is only a hundred yuan."

It is reported that UStyle Times plans to complete the shooting of digital human for 1 million people next year, making everyone's life more convenient and better.

---

The following is the full text of Jiang Yahong's speech:

Hello, guests and friends, I am Jiang Yahong. Thank you very much for the invitation to the Sohu Finance Annual Forum. Today I will share with you the technology and development of digital human in the metaverse.

China is comprehensively promoting the innovation of digital technology and the high-quality development of the digital economy. As a virtual and real fusion experience, the metaverse is regarded as an advanced form of the digital economy and a new engine for the development of the digital economy, and has risen to the height of national strategy. In 2023, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology and other five ministries and commissions jointly issued a three-year action plan for the innovation and development of the metaverse industry, and many provinces and cities have also issued relevant policies to promote the rapid development of the metaverse industry.

The metaverse has been talked about for more than three years, but many people still don't know much about it. We all have experience using video conferences. The effect of communication across the screen is obviously not comparable to face-to-face communication. The original intention of proposing the metaverse is to achieve a face-to-face communication experience even if people are not in the same place.

How can this be achieved? I will use this video to explain it to you.

At the end of 2021, Zuckerberg of Facebook first proposed the concept of "metaverse". In his video, he showed that when wearing VR glasses, everyone has their own digital human in the virtual space, and the eyes, expressions, and demeanor of the real person and the digital human are synchronized. In this way, when we are not together, when you put on VR glasses, you can feel face-to-face communication like a real person.

Of course, the video is still very primitive, the glasses are also very bulky, and their digital human are not so similar to the real person. But these technologies are moving forward.

So it can be seen that the most important and core thing in the metaverse world is that everyone must have their own real 3D digital human. Only with digital human can we truly experience the similarity between the metaverse and the real world.

So, is it easy to make a real digital human?

In fact, it is not easy. A few years ago, Nvidia's Jen-Hsun Huang made his digital human. Not only was the process relatively complicated, but the cost was also more than a million dollars.

Our company focuses on making digital human that are the same as real people. We developed the UStyle 3D cloud array camera ourselves. This camera only takes 1 second to shoot, and can create a 3D digital avatar that is exactly the same as a real person in as fast as 5 minutes, and can reach the application level of the metaverse, and the cost is only a hundred yuan.

Let me show you, this is me shooting and creating a digital human. People walk into the machine, which has 140 cameras, shooting once a second, and then we use algorithms to calculate the digital human, and then use the digital avatar engine to activate the digital human, and it can move.

This is my digital human, dancing downstairs in our office building; this is my digital human playing basketball, and his kung fu is also amazing.

So you can see that with digital human, there is nothing we can't do except what we can't think of.

First, make a digital human that is exactly like you and can speak well. Then, with the help of VR glasses, we can truly immerse ourselves in the application scenarios of the metaverse, whether it is a meeting, work, or entertainment.

Currently, UStyle Times is at the forefront of the industry. The real-life 3D digital human made by UStyle Times have been widely used in many fields. We are the digital human service provider for the Hangzhou Asian Games, and we shoot and create digital avatars for many athletes, media, etc., allowing them to use digital avatars to participate in the Asian Games and visit the beautiful scenery of Hangzhou.

The most important application scenario is in tourist attractions. By providing digital human shooting services for tourists, UStyle Times generates short videos closely related to the IP of the scenic spot for tourists to keep and share.

This is at Shanghai Disney's Toy Story Hotel. We created a short video of Toy Story, and my digital human is in it. Now we have also landed in Zhangjiajie Scenic Area. We can create digital human for tourists and then create a short movie of Avatar. In addition, it is being implemented in many places such as Beijing Olympic Forest Park and Shaolin Temple.

UStyle 3D cloud array camera is also very popular in colleges and universities. In teaching and scientific research, students can use our camera to generate digital human, and then use their own digital human files to create digital content. Many schools and colleges have purchased and used it, such as Shanghai University, South China University of Technology, Yunnan University, Hong Kong University of Science and Technology...

Digital human can also be applied to many scenes, such as games. My digital human became Monkey King fighting in the game, which is very interesting. In the future, each of our digital human may enter the game world.

When we design a variety of different plots, we can also make a variety of metaverse movies. This is the first Metaverse movie "Wonderland" planned by the famous economist Professor Zhu Jiaming, with real digital human as the protagonist. This is my digital human. Of course, if you use our camera to shoot digital human, your digital human can also be in it, and everyone can participate.

Digital human have many applications in the Metaverse. Let's imagine that if everyone has their own digital human, everyone uses these AR and VR glasses, and everyone has an immersive experience in the Metaverse, our lives will change a lot.

For example, shopping, if we buy things now, we can only look at them with our eyes and choose by feeling on the APP. If I want to buy a cup in the Metaverse, I put on my glasses, and the salesperson's digital human can show me the cup.

In the future, media can be generated in real time through digital human in the metaverse, becoming "meta-media"; teaching may also be one-to-one, a good Chinese teacher can create 1 million digital avatars to teach Chinese to different children one-to-one; work is remote office; film and television are all personalized, you can watch while producing, and create plots based on your reaction...

So it can be seen that the future metaverse application and digital human will bring revolutionary changes to our lives and work. So when we talk about digital economy, the metaverse is the advanced form of digital economy; real 3D digital human are the pass to enter the metaverse and the cornerstone of the metaverse scene.

I will share here today, thank you.