Wang Jingli wangjingli0715@163.com A LIFE-LIKE digital human in a red top and white dress was seen interacting with visitors including a delegation composed of international students from Shenzhen University (SZU) yesterday at the China Mobile exhibition booth in Hall 4 of the 24th China Hi-Tech Fair (CHTF) at the Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center in Futian District. The “virtual human” named Qianyan, jointly developed by Shenzhen-based Winseety Digital Technology Co. Ltd. and Hunan Malanshan Media Computing Institute and in cooperation with China Mobile, was displayed at the CHTF for the first time. The developers explored a slew of technologies including 5G, artificial intelligence (AI), algorithm and 3D modeling to turn people into real-time holograms, shifting the way people communicate via 3D. “The digital human can not only interact with people, but also offer sign language translation service,” said Hu Guoqi, an exhibitor representative from China Mobile. Human voices are captured by a microphone and then recognized by a cloud-based real-time speech recognition engine. It generates reasonable chat reply texts through a system supported by model training, along with natural lip shape, expression and movement allowing the digital human to perform more naturally, according to Hu. At present, the digital human is mainly used for public and government-related services like providing instructions at airports or administrative service centers and is expected to be applied in more scenarios such as at home and on popular metaverse platforms. “It was an amazing experience and we got in touch with so many tech-driven companies. I also learned how the future relies so much on technology,” Priyasha Sharma, an international student from SZU, said after visiting CHTF yesterday. | 