It's reported that the number of applications for executive positions in the digital human enterprise of JD Cloud Yanxi has exceeded a hundred, with "Cai Xiao Dong Brother" inspiring other CEOs to eagerly try their hand at leveraging digital humans for sales!
Recently, the AI digital human "Cai Xiao Dong Brother" made a debut in JD's sales live streaming, completely igniting a craze for the application of digital humans. According to WeChat Index searches, the keyword "digital human" reached its peak on April 16th.
Data from JD's live streaming room shows that the total number of viewers for Cai Xiao Dong Brother's live stream reached 40 million, with the first live stream generating over 50 million yuan in sales in less than an hour. Industry insiders commented that this sales performance has already reached the daily level of top anchor Li Jiaqi on Taobao.
The suction effect brought by Cai Xiaodong's debut continues. A source close to JD.com revealed to the media that after Cai Xiaodong's live streaming debut, the JD Cloud Yanxi team responsible for technical support has received inquiries from thousands of enterprises including brand merchants, cultural tourism, and finance. Over a hundred enterprise executives have already customized their appearance schedules, and internal coordination of product technology and other related resources is underway to provide support.
The source also disclosed that besides corporate executives, many local cultural tourism entities have approached JD Cloud Yanxi to customize digital personalities to break out of the screen. In response, we reached out to JD Cloud for verification, and the official response stated, "Customized digital personalities will be launched in an orderly manner with a focus on ensuring product quality and application scenarios."
The effectiveness of digital personalities depends on product strength
How useful are digital personalities? A veteran in the digital personality industry revealed that the industry has been developing for at least five years with numerous players. The direction of live digital personalities started heating up last year, but many were entered by technical teams who lack understanding of live streaming, branding, and e-commerce. Few truly understand products and operations.
In fact, digital personalities are not as versatile as commonly speculated by the public; their value actually has limits. With the continuous development and improvement of digital personality technology, the entry barrier has become relatively low. To unleash their value, it's crucial to find the right scenarios, and the barriers to products and operations are extremely high. The biggest argument against them is that digital personalities cannot replace real people, thus limiting the value of digital live streaming. JD Cloud experts stated that in the development process, Yanxi digital personalities are not aimed at replacing current live streamers but rather aiming for synergy with real teams through high plasticity and sustainable output capabilities, maximizing incremental gains.
The success of Cai Xiaodong's AI digital live streaming, achieving both traffic and sales, was not accidental. During the live stream, Cai Xiaodong speaks in an authentic "Suqian dialect," swings his arms during emotional peaks, and occasionally glances at his phone to reply to questions from netizens. This effect, which captivated the scrutiny of 40 million viewers, relied not only on the drive of multimodal interaction technology but crucially on the seamless cooperation between the live streaming operation team and the digital personality product.
The team at JD Cloud Yanxi revealed that in creating their digital human live streaming product, they aim to return to the essence of e-commerce live streaming, emphasizing the supremacy of operations. With live streaming effectiveness as the ultimate goal and usability as the sole criterion, they comprehensively optimize live streaming from aspects such as image, performance, decoration, interaction, and presentation. Based on this, the product, technology, and marketing teams are closely aligned around the same goal, constantly approaching better results. The objective is to create the most user-friendly digital human in the e-commerce field. This approach stands out in the digital human e-commerce live streaming sector, forming a differentiated path with product operations at its core.
It is reported that JD Cloud Yanxi has begun deep cooperation with some key brands this year, using these leading brand live streams as a pivot to explore and rapidly disseminate effective experiences in digital human live streaming operations. JD Cloud Yanxi is arguably the only industry player with a deep understanding of digital human live streaming operations, having accumulated a wealth of unique operational methodologies and experiences through real-world practices in various brand store live streams and promotional activities. Their newly upgraded Yanxi digital human 3.0 version has fully integrated the Yanxi large model, focusing on e-commerce sales scenarios, enabling digital human live streaming to have richer expression and more intelligent interaction. This will further help brand merchants reduce live streaming costs, improve operational efficiency, and optimize user experience.
Prior to JD's 618 Shopping Festival, JD Cloud Yanxi's digital humans also aim to take another step forward in commercialization. According to official sources, JD Cloud will fully open the technology and products behind "Cai Xiao Dong Ge" to a wide range of brand merchants and provide a 30-day free trial. This move is worth looking forward to regarding its impact on the upcoming JD 618 live e-commerce landscape.
With the success of Dong Ge's digital human, can it ignite other digital human manufacturers?
As the fastest-growing tool in the era of large models and mature applications, the success of digital humans depends on deep exploration and application of actual scenarios. Looking back at the development of data middle platforms, Alibaba, as an industry pioneer, first proposed this concept and has achieved full application and development in its own business practices. However, it is regrettable that other digital service providers followed suit and quickly launched middle platform products, but few were successful in landing them, and many ToB service providers stumbled on middle platform products. This is not only because of the technical difficulty but more fundamentally because of the lack of deep understanding of actual business scenarios and rich practical experience. Without this "gene," no matter how advanced the technology is, it is difficult to fully leverage the product power.
Similarly, the success of Dong Ge's digital human live streaming does not necessarily mean that other digital human manufacturers will all encounter development opportunities. In the digital human market, technology is relatively open, and product competitiveness is no longer limited to technology itself but more reflected in its actual application value. The core of product power lies in accurately capturing and meeting the demands of actual application scenarios, rather than blindly following trends.
