**Legal Risk Report of Virtual Digital Human Industry**
At the moment of the metaverse craze, it is well known that Neil Stephenson created and detailed the concept of the metaverse in his novel Snow Crash. But people who haven’t read “Avalanche” rarely know that Neil also created another great concept – the virtual avatar (Avatar) . Yes, Avatar is the transliteration of Avatar. This epoch-making film draws creative inspiration from this concept, so as to discuss with the audience Freud’s “id” and “self” in a fantasy world. and the philosophical concept of the “superego”, both fascinating and thought-provoking.
Today, the virtual avatar (Avatar) has developed in China so far, and has a more well-known title: virtual digital person( 14.390 , -0.48 , -3.23% ) . Many technology industry pioneers believe that this is the “anchor point” through which we humans, as objectively existing physical entities, enter and reside in the digital world .
In 2021, virtual digital humans will become popular with the concept of the metaverse, spawning a large number of virtual digital people such as Liu Yexi, Luo Tianyi, AYAYI, Mei Setian, Hua Zhibing, etc., which have become popular due to their good looks, good characters and platform operations. digital people. Time comes to 2022, how are the virtual digital people?
For issues such as the basic definition of virtual digital human, you can refer to the article “Original | Metaverse Compliance Report (VI) Virtual Digital Human” by Sister Sa’s team, which will not be repeated here. Today, Sister Sa’s team once again focused on the virtual digital human, and made in-depth discussions with you on the problems that have appeared and may arise in its recent development.
1. Virtual digital people, how are you?
First of all, we still need to learn from the “China Virtual Digital Human Influence Index Report” released by the Communication University of China, and divide the existing virtual digital human in the market into three categories in terms of use:
(1) Idol type . A digital person with a unique personality and an idol-like appearance (usually a hyper-realistic virtual digital person), which can be attached with brand connotations to show the corporate brand image to the outside world, such as Liu Yexi, Ling, AYAYI, etc.;
(2) Service type . It is mainly used to provide relatively standardized and intelligent services for specific customers to replace repetitive manual operations, such as a certain treasure intelligent customer service;
(3) Expert type . Mainly used in professional fields such as media, medical care, education, etc., through deep learning, speech synthesis, human-computer interaction and other training, such virtual digital human can assume the role of virtual psychiatrist, virtual teacher and other roles to provide professional services to the public, so this winter The virtual sign language digital people appearing in the Olympic live broadcast, etc. In fact, this type of virtual digital human also belongs to the category of service-oriented digital human. To a certain extent, it can be understood as a service-oriented digital human with higher cost, more intelligence, more interactive functions, and more specialized services.
As the first phenomenon-level virtual digital human in the history of our country, the myth of Liu Yexi’s rise of more than 4 million followers in seven days has never been broken by “people”, and he is unparalleled in spreading influence and marketing innovation. On April 22, 2022, Liu Yexi’s account of a certain voice released his 15th short video. As of this writing, it has received 313,000 likes, 5,104 comments and 2,807 reposts. Since this short video is a cooperative marketing content, the traffic is not high. Big is also reasonable. And the sixth episode of the short drama “Earthly Branch Mystery” released on April 20 received a total of 1.597 million likes, 39,000 comments and 41,000 retweets. However, under the tide of prosperous traffic, it is not difficult to see that even Liu Yexi, the first sister, is facing many difficulties, and the operation of virtual digital people is not easy.
The first is the issue of “production”. More than half a year has passed since October, 2021. Except for some short promotional and marketing videos, Liu Yexi’s account actually only released about 7 videos including the debut video and the “Earthly Branch Mystery” series of short dramas. work. Such “production” is obviously difficult for the Internet with the explosion of information to be remembered by the Internet with only seven seconds of memory like goldfish.
On the short video platform where information is fragmented and rapidly circulated, even the most popular live-action internet celebrities still need to create spiritual products for consumers through the creation speed of “daily updates” or even “daily updates”, while refreshing their own content. The memory in the Internet, not to mention the long-term live broadcast interaction, there are not a few anchors who have health problems caused by long-term live broadcast, even the official account of Sister Sa’s team needs to maintain daily creative ability.
All this is for “to be seen” and “to be remembered”. A hard truth is that an influencer who has lost its following is like an NFT that has lost its liquidity â?? it no longer has (commercial) value .
In fact, low productivity is a common problem for hyper-realistic virtual digital people like Liu Yexi. One of the reasons is that there are still insurmountable technical obstacles: such hyper-realistic virtual figures are not only expensive to create (it is rumored that the cost of creating a short play may even reach more than 3 million yuan), but the creation cycle is even more frightening. According to the existing technology, without reducing the quality, a scene of tens of seconds of such a virtual digital human work may take about two months for a professional production team. In addition, virtual digital people will also lengthen the creation cycle of works due to the existence of multi-party ownership by copyright owners, operators, and technical parties, fragmentation of intellectual property rights such as copyright, and commissioned operation .
At present, how many companies are there on the virtual digital human race in China? How many virtual digital human projects are currently incubating? We donâ??t know the specific data, but combined with Tianyancha and various third-party statistical reports, we can draw a general data: At present, the number of companies and enterprises related to virtual digital people in China is about 300,000 to 400,000, and the incubation period is about 300,000. The virtual digital human project is conservatively estimated to have exceeded 10,000. So many virtual digital human enterprises and projects bring a serious problem: product homogeneity.
At present, as the upstream technology side and the midstream service side become more and more mature, the threshold for the creation and application of virtual digital people has become lower, which leads to a large number of virtual digital people appearing in the market, even high-end hyper-realistic virtual digital people. In the fierce competition there is also fierce competition. The emergence of a large number of virtual figures and homogeneous products has led to a result: consumers have seen too much aesthetic fatigue .
In fact, the root cause of the homogenization dilemma faced by virtual digital humans comes from a concept that is easy to understand in economics: the diminishing marginal effect . One of the most popular understandings of this effect is that when the same enjoyment of human beings is repeated, the enjoyment brought by it will gradually decrease (Hermann Gerson’s first law). For example, if the author is a beggar who is starving to death, a kind aunt on the street gives me a bun, and asks me to rate her cooking skills after eating it, no matter whether the bun is really delicious or not, I will definitely give top marks to this charcoal-in-the-snow bun. At this time, suddenly the author won hundreds of millions of lottery tickets and turned from a beggar to a rich man. At this time, he can continue to eat all kinds of buns, but as the author eats more, he becomes more picky. In the follow-up, no matter how delicious the buns are, the score given by the author is getting lower and lower. The satisfaction that “new buns” bring to the author gradually diminishes, which is the diminishing marginal effect.
A lot of homogenization in the virtual digital human industry is like the author’s steamed buns, and they are tired of eating. There are two ways to get rid of this dilemma: create better quality products, or turn baozi into dumplings . No matter how to break the circle, innovating product forms and creating more connotations for virtual digital people are the top priorities of the industry. In fact, it is not simple to answer this, and it is not too difficult to say that it is difficult. Although there are many virtual digital human enterprises in my country, the development of the industry is not long, the domestic industry accumulation is limited, and technical talents are also very scarce. Content creation is still at a relatively rudimentary level, and teams often only need to find one or two bright spots to stand out.
The “collapsed house” originated from an online interview. In the interview, the interviewee said: “When I saw a house collapsed over there, I went to watch the fun, and found out that it was my own house that collapsed, and my tears flowed when I saw it. Come down.” Later became a popular word in the Internet fan circle, referring to the collapse of the idol star’s image in the minds of fans due to various reasons (derailment, tax evasion, etc.) .
Article 32 of the “Radio and Television Law of the People’s Republic of China (Draft for Comment)” stipulates that if the main creators of radio and television programs violate relevant laws and regulations and cause adverse social impact, the competent department of radio and television under the State Council may impose penalties on the broadcasting of relevant programs. necessary restrictions. In the current environment, once a house collapse occurs, idol stars often become “bad actors” and lose their commercial value.
Generally speaking, due to their virtual identity, virtual digital people have neither emotions nor personal freedom, and their words and deeds are “set”, so they are considered to be synonymous with “never collapse”. But in fact, virtual digital people will also collapse, and there will also be a public relations crisis .
Here we have to introduce another new concept – the person in the middle . Zhongzhiren originally originated from the Japanese “ä¸ã®äºº”, which refers to the person who manipulates vtuber (ie, Virtual YouTuber, virtual anchor) to conduct live broadcasts, and also generally refers to any worker who provides a sound source. â??To make a most intuitive analogy, the people in the middle are like the real people in the large puppets or mascots at the entrance of the mall . The difference is that Zhongzhiren is the real person behind the virtual digital human. By using a series of technological means such as scanning, modeling, rendering, and motion capture, Zhongzhiren can operate the virtual digital human behind the scenes for live broadcast, chat and other operations. .
Are virtual digital people who exist in the middle of nowhere counted as virtual digital people in the true sense? This is a controversial issue, but the unavoidable reality is that in today’s virtual digital human industry, due to the high cost and low output of hyper-realistic digital human beings, there are a large number of people in the middle . This has to remind the author of a famous saying in the classroom of the administrative law teacher: “What is artificial intelligence? There are as many artificial intelligences as there are artificial intelligences!”
Therefore, the collapse of the virtual digital house and the public relations crisis caused by the people in the middle are unavoidable. Recently, A-Sxxxx, a “top-stream” virtual idol group that started with the letter B and has over a million followers on a famous video website, has experienced a major crisis. The reason is that the member of the virtual idol team, Moule, is going to “sleep” . The official answer is that the person in the music group needs to quit the group due to “physical and academic reasons”, but it is widely rumored that the real reason for the person in Zhongren quit. , is the inhuman squeeze and low wages of the company behind it.
Even though the member said in the live broadcast that he was not in serious trouble, the reason for his withdrawal was indeed that he had difficulty balancing work and physical health, but the social account of the suspected person discovered by the fanatical fans through various clues has obviously become his “believer”. â??Iron evidenceâ? of abuseâ? and â??oppressionâ?. For this reason, millions of fans turned their guns on a technology giant company behind it, and a large-scale public opinion incident was formed for a while, and the company had to apologize after that. This incident once again proved that the operation of virtual digital humans is not just as simple as solving technical problems .
The current virtual digital human industry is a deep integration of technology and human nature, and there are frequent collisions between old and new social relationships. The virtual digital human industry not only involves data security, personal information protection, financial security, intellectual property protection and other elements that are often discussed in the metaverse industry, but also involves labor law, constitution, criminal law and other issues. It can be said that the virtual digital human industry is forming a A more comprehensive, complex, complex industry full of opposing conflicts, where fantasy and reality coexist .
Data security, intellectual property and financial risks, etc., we often mention in the Metaverse compliance series articles. Due to the limited space, this article mainly focuses on the labor rights protection of Zhongzhiren and the marketing promotion of virtual digital humans in the virtual digital human industry. The legal risks existing in the development are analyzed.
(1) Protection of labor rights
The right to labor refers to the right of citizens with labor ability to demand the opportunity to participate in social labor and to ensure that labor gets paid. The right to labor is one of the basic rights of citizens. It is both a citizen’s right and a citizen’s obligation. As a right, the labor right has a very rich connotation, but the most important are three rights: (1) the right to employment; (2) to obtain labor remuneration right; (3) the right to rest. my country’s “Constitution” clearly stipulates: “Citizens of the People’s Republic of China have the right and obligation to work. The state uses various channels to create labor and employment conditions, strengthen labor protection, improve labor conditions, and on the basis of development of production, increase labor remuneration. and benefits.â?
At present, there is a common problem in the virtual digital human industry that the welfare treatment of Chinese people does not comply with the labor law. Bearing the brunt of the problem is the difficulty of guaranteeing the right to rest for the middle-aged people. Article 24 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights states: “Everyone has the right to rest and leisure, including reasonable limitation of working hours and periodic holidays with pay”. Article 3 of my country’s “Labor Law” not only recognizes the right to rest as a basic right of workers, but also adopts special provisions in Chapter Four. Article 41 of my country’s “Labor Law” stipulates that due to the needs of production and operation, the employer may extend the working hours after consultation with the trade union and laborers, generally not exceeding one hour per day; if the working hours need to be extended due to special reasons, the Under the condition of ensuring the health of workers, the extended working hours shall not exceed three hours per day, but shall not exceed thirty-six hours per month.
In the recent incident of an A-SXXX virtual idol group, it is said that its members often work for several months without rest or overnight, and the monthly salary is only about 10,000 yuan, which is seriously incompatible with the economic value it creates. proportional . Although the competition in industries such as Internet companies is fierce and overtime work is common, don’t forget that although virtual digital people are not “humans”, the people behind them are real employees. Different from the employees who work overtime all the year round hidden behind the code, the people in the virtual digital human beings, as special characters with greater social influence and carrying more emotional projections of users, have great influence on the operation of the enterprise and the social reputation of the enterprise. significant impact.
Sister Sa’s team does not believe that Dachang should treat people in the middle differently and give them special care. After all , the purpose of the law is to maintain social justice, that is, every employee deserves to be treated kindly and gets a job commensurate with their labor and income. income . At present, improving the working environment of Zhongzhiren and formulating appropriate revenue distribution policies are the top priorities of the operation team, otherwise it will cause legal and moral risks.
(2) Beware of improper marketing
Due to the high operating costs of hyper-realistic virtual digital people, adding brand connotations to virtual digital people, conducting business cooperation with brands, and monetizing live streaming traffic with goods are also current routine operations. However, there are still legal risks in the marketing of virtual digital people.
In 2021, a hyper-realistic virtual digital person set up by a certain country-style person published a book of notes and carried out a wave of marketing with goods to promote its platform. The virtual digital person made it clear that a certain brand of lipstick is moisturizing and not dry. Very useful. . . . . . This marketing has raised a lot of questions: “How do virtual digital people know whether lipstick is good or not?” Such marketing promotion is suspected of being suspected of false propaganda and false advertising .
According to the provisions of the Anti-Unfair Competition Law of the People’s Republic of China, the forms of false propaganda include advertisements and other forms of propaganda. If false propaganda is carried out through advertisements, the provisions of the Advertising Law of the People’s Republic of China shall apply. If the marketing behavior of the virtual digital person is identified as “false propaganda through advertising “, the provisions of China’s “Advertising Law ” shall apply, and the administrative department for industry and commerce shall impose administrative penalties . Administrative penalties under the Fair Competition Law . In addition, in my country’s judicial practice, there is no overlapping relationship between the two laws. If the virtual digital person is determined to have both false advertising and other forms of propaganda, administrative penalties can be applied together.
The virtual digital person of a foreign top-class Internet celebrity has a more confusing operation in marketing: he said that he was “sexually harassed” by other passengers in the process of taking a taxi. This marketing behavior quickly attracted criticism from the public, and it was later proved that the “sexual harassment” of the virtual digital person was entirely compiled by the team behind him . This kind of marketing method can not help but remind people of the incident last year when a woman in Hangzhou was secretly photographed picking up a courier to spread a rumor.
If the virtual digital team attracts attention by fabricating or compiling non-existent events in marketing, resulting in the loss of others’ personality rights and reputation rights, it is likely to constitute a crime of insult or defamation . According to Article 2 of the Interpretation of the Supreme People’s Court on Several Issues Concerning the Application of Law in Handling Criminal Cases of Using Information Networks to Commit Defamation, etc.: The use of information networks to slander others, under any of the following circumstances, shall be identified as Criminal Law No. 246 Article [Insulting; Defamation] The “serious circumstances” stipulated in the first paragraph: (1) The same defamatory information has actually been clicked, viewed more than 5,000 times , or reposted more than 500 times . ï¼?ï¼?ï¼?ï¼?ï¼?
The virtual digital person itself is well-known and has a large influence on the Internet. It is a blink of an eye to click and browse 5,000 times or forward five hundred times. Therefore, improper marketing has a greater impact on the operation team behind the virtual digital person. Criminal risks must be taken seriously.
write at the end
The virtual digital human industry is in a stage of development. For various enterprises, whether real gold is not afraid of fire or mud bulls into the sea, the key is not only to have enough technology, but also to have enough awareness of risk prevention . In addition to data security, personal information protection, intellectual property protection, financial security, labor rights protection, and marketing risks mentioned today, the virtual digital human industry also has legal risks in terms of taxation and biosecurity.
In addition, the conflict between human ethics and technology has become more and more prominent in the virtual digital human industry. It can be said that the compliance construction of the virtual digital human industry is not only a precautionary measure, but also a top priority. After all, only compliant operation can survive the big waves.
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