(Yicai) April 23 -- JD.com’s founder Richard Liu recently made his third appearance as a virtual livestreaming host on the Chinese e-commerce giant’s platform to much acclaim. The cost of using a digital anchor is just one-tenth of that of using a real human host, a company executive said.

As the large language model matures, servers’ costs have been reduced considerably, said the executive, who is in charge of the Beijing-based firm’s cloud computing business. For the digital version of Liu, there are some extra costs in terms of selecting merchandise.

Liu’s digital form did well during his livestreaming debut on April 16. After his appearance, many big-name brands and other vendors said they would like to sign up with JD.com, the company’s algorithm director told Yicai. And chief executive officers from other companies have also expressed their intention to link arms with JD.com to develop virtual hosts.

JD.com will develop more digital anchors this year, the executive said. Creating virtual versions of influencers and CEOs for livestreaming will have a similar effect on these firms as the digital Liu is having on JD.com.

China’s digital anchor market will more than double by 2025 from 2023 to CNY48 billion (USD6.6 billion), according to market research firm iiMedia Research.

Virtual live sales hosts, virtual idols and virtual employees are the three types of digital humans that Chinese people are most exposed to, Hong Kong-based iiMedia said. And virtual livestreamers have the biggest reach, being viewed by 81.4 percent of those polled.

However, there is still room for improvement in terms of their performance. Better interaction with viewers will be the focus, the algorithm director said.

“I’m wondering whether a digital human can become a doppelganger of the real person by having similar ideas, thoughts and knowledge, so that he/she can communicate in-depth with viewers for a longer period of time,” he added.

Editor: Kim Taylor