Small and medium bosses love to use AI

Source: "Economic Observer" (ID: eeo-com-cn), author: Shen Yiran

Introduction

**一||Virtual anchor technology is to use virtual reality and software technology to clone real people in the virtual world, but it has not been commercialized, because it lacks a useful "brain" and cannot simulate real people's voice and emotion to explain and express interact with people. **

**二||For small and medium-sized companies, efficiency is not the pain point, but the lack of human resources is. If AI capabilities can surpass ordinary designers, it will offset the advantages of large companies in the number of personnel. **

Image source: Generated by Unbounded AI

With ChatGPT and many large domestic models, a feeling of excitement and panic spread among business owners, "I will panic when I see someone announces the use of a new AIGC (generative artificial intelligence) tool." Li Weijia, the owner of a small and medium-sized advertising design company, told reporters that when he was walking on the streets of Shanghai, the posters of the bus and subway stations began to be drawn with AI, and the sporadic AI elements reminded him that "this is a revolution, and it will be too late if you don't use it."

Zhen Qi is the operator of two MCN organizations and several guilds. In the past two months, he developed a virtual digital human anchor technology, and successively dismissed more than 30 real anchors, because he realized an idea: embed ChatGPT into virtual anchors The "brain" of the brain is comparable to the effect of a real person.

The explosion of ChatGPT made people see the advantages of generative artificial intelligence. The first batch of companies began to use AIGC to reshape themselves. Most of them are small and medium-sized enterprises from the content creation industry. Business owners generally believe that AI is very suitable for divergent brainpower Labor, its ease of use and inclusiveness, helps them quickly generate a large amount of digital content at a very low cost.

It is especially prominent in the fields of advertising design, game audio and video, and e-commerce live broadcast. Screenwriters use ChatGPT to write scripts, sales use ChatGPT to write proposals and bidding documents, and designers and game creators use Midjourney (a popular overseas AI painting large model, which can be drawn by Vincent) , Tushengtu) to make pictures, and some people embed generative AI into smart speakers and the "brain" of virtual anchors. "AIGC is equal to all companies, and everyone can use it to reduce costs and increase efficiency." Li Weijia said.

However, due to its greater flexibility, AI is landing faster in small and medium-sized companies, and some companies have optimized a number of white-collar jobs through the introduction of AI.

Although there is no perfect plan, small and medium-sized enterprises only regard AI as a life-saving straw in the cold winter, a tool to outperform their opponents, and an opportunity to overtake on corners. But the upside is that the AI is improvising its power in unexpected places.

01 Use AI in unexpected places

Zhen Qi recently completed a major event. As the operator of the MCN company, he has incubated countless Internet celebrities. In the first half of the year, he successively dismissed more than 30 live anchors and replaced them with virtual anchors.

The main business of MCN is to incubate and package internet celebrities for live delivery. At the end of February, when Zhen Qi went to Shenzhen and Hangzhou for inspection, he found that the virtual anchor technology that the whole industry had been looking forward to had begun to land.

This relies on the help of generative artificial intelligence. To put it simply, virtual anchor technology is to use virtual reality and software to clone real people in the virtual world, but it has not been commercialized because it lacks a useful "brain" and cannot simulate real people's voice and emotion to explain and communicate with people. interactive.

"I don't know who invented the 'brain' of ChatGPT embedded in the anchor, and really realized the replacement of real people with digital people." Zhen Qi said.

The method of installing a "brain" for virtual anchors quickly spread among business owners. After Zhen Qi came back, he spent 200,000 yuan to develop this platform by himself, and some fellow bosses came to purchase and rent it.

The biggest cost of MCN is the signing fee of Internet celebrities, and the labor costs for cultivating Internet celebrities. Usually, each anchor needs to be equipped with a full-time team of 5 people, writing scripts, filming, editing, directing, and operations. Zhen Qi said, The cost of a junior anchor is 8,000 yuan/month, and the salary cost of the professional team matched by the company to the anchor is about 150,000 yuan/month.

The launch of the avatar is not complicated. You can input male models or avatar images, use ChatGPT to write speeches, record voices, and synthesize audio and video. Although it is impossible to perform plots and affectionate interactions, general product introductions and interactions are possible. In Zhen Qi's opinion, at least a junior anchor can be replaced.

With the expansion of the anchor crowd and the opening of the offline market, the decline in the income of MCN companies has become a trend. The general consensus among business owners is that it is more difficult to increase fans, increase traffic, and release popular models. As a business owner, reducing costs, increasing efficiency, and strengthening team combat effectiveness are his goals this year.

Zhen Qi's plan is to replace a group of junior anchors. The reformed work flow is, a virtual anchor + an operator + ChatGPT, the salary cost of an operation post is 20,000 yuan/month, the virtual anchor technology amortizes the cost of 1,000 yuan/month, ChatGPT is free, and the service time of the anchor can be increased. Virtual anchors can work 24 hours a day, and real people can last up to 3 hours at a time. Compared with the original 6-person team with a monthly cost of 150,000 yuan, the profit margin has been greatly improved.

Zhen Qi first heard about ChatGPT at the end of last year. For a while, he traveled to various online communities, went to major factories to study, and signed up for paid courses. He believes that the divergent thinking of ChatGPT is no worse than that of humans, and it is very efficient to replace humans to do some divergent mental work.

Of course, the top talents with a fan base still cannot be replaced by digital people, but the dismissal of a group of junior talents allowed Zhen Qi not only to save a batch of anchor costs, but also to incubate more anchors based on the existing manpower.

02 AIGC IS EQUAL

"If each designer and copywriter is equipped with an AI, more plans can be produced at the same time, which is equivalent to recruiting more employees without paying wages." Li Weijia, founder of Shanghai Lingyi Advertising Co., Ltd., is doing a calculation account.

Li Weijia's company has long served the governments of Shanghai Zhangjiang and Pudong New Area, doing graphic design of related products. In April this year, all staff introduced ChatGPT and Midjourney, two popular overseas AIGC tools. They use ChatGPT to propose proposals to Party A and use ChatGPT to produce copywriting. , the artist uses Midjourney for design drawings and renderings, uses Stabl eDiffusion (a popular overseas AI animation generation tool) to replace photographers and models, and synthesizes some product upper body photos. People just need to regularize and revise the whole process.

It takes a day or two for a person to make a PPT, and 3-5 days to draw a commercial illustration, but it only takes an afternoon or a few minutes to do it with AI. Employees can complete more work without having to work overtime. Using AI tools The cost is a low monthly fee and a host of top-of-the-line graphics cards.

For small and medium-sized companies, efficiency is not the pain point, but the lack of human resources is. If AI capabilities can surpass ordinary designers, it will offset the advantages of large companies in the number of personnel. Li Weijia said that after all the staff connected to Midjourney, he found that the gap between low-handed painters and high-handed painters is narrowing.

He regards AI as a new production tool. According to his observation, the more fledgling painters are more likely to accept it, while the masters have a certain resistance. Although in many companies, junior painters are full of resistance to technology due to AI being laid off, But this is an opportunity for novices.

Like ChatGPT, which has reached millions to hundreds of millions of parameters, Midjourney, as an image generation model, has a massive gallery of various master-level works behind it.

Li Weijia believes that a person who understands machine language can use art expertise to ask questions to it, and he can develop creativity on the basis of masters in a shorter period of time. Although this cannot catch up with senior talents, it also reduces the premium of senior talents.

Li Weijia predicts that the first batch of business owners will taste the sweetness, which will trigger more companies to join in. Not only entrepreneurs will get involved, but all Party B companies will become more and more involved, and the efficiency of service providers will become higher and higher. If the products are still the same In the end, the price will only be lowered by customers. As the requirements of Party A become higher and higher, the overall profit will be diluted.

Li Zhen, COO of Beijing Yuanyi Imagine Technology Co., Ltd., told reporters that the essence of AIGC is to greatly reduce the threshold of human-computer interaction, and will accelerate the integration of AI into the production of all enterprises. But in contrast, the speed of integration of small and medium-sized enterprises is faster. On the one hand, such enterprises have a shorter decision-making chain, a more intense competitive environment, and fewer resources at the same time. The AIGC model can increase the breadth of talents, replace some manpower, and broaden the boundaries of many positions. This is very suitable for solving current problems. The bottlenecks and problems faced by small and medium-sized enterprises. Business owners want to reduce costs and increase efficiency. They will use some large language models and large drawing models. Such technologies have matured overseas and are cheap.

Li Zhen said that the perspective of large-scale enterprises is different. In order to maintain monopoly status and ensure safety and stability, business owners often purchase large-scale industry models at high prices for privatization for business use. They need to train large-scale models and cultivate professional talents. The whole project is more complicated. , while the technical development of vertical scene large models lags behind that of general large models, the threshold for human-computer interaction needs to be lowered, and it has not yet been well integrated into production.