Artificial Intelligence

“In one month, a vituber receives $134,000 and this figure is only growing,” who are vitubers and how does virtual reality replace ordinary bloggers?

Even if you are not interested in trends on Youtube, you have probably seen videos with anime girls in the recommendations. Such content on video hosting is gaining millions of views and fans from different countries. The creators of such videos even got the name VTuber or vitubers. In this article, we will analyze who the vitubers are, how they appeared, how they became popular, and how difficult it is to create such an image for an ordinary person.

What is VTuber? A vituber, or virtual
YouTuber, is an online content creator who uses virtual avatars instead of his face. Virtual avatars are programmed to mimic the movements of the person behind the camera. Animated avatars usually resemble the appearance of anime characters from anime series or manga. They have big eyes, bright hair and a sonorous voice. They can be both 2D and 3D characters. The most recognizable image of the vituber is Kizuna AI. It is believed that this is the first virtual vlogger, and it has long grown beyond Youtube.

Over the past 5 years, interest in vitubers has grown by 6900%. The pandemic helped in this - in 2020, videos with animated avatars collected more than 1.5 billion views.

The Vtubers are the next generation of influencers. They use their creativity and storytelling skills to entertain viewers who watch their videos. History of VTubers: how did it all start and who was the first vituber? Although the Vtubers have become popular only in the last couple of years, the trend itself is not a sensation. The trend of creating virtual content started back in Japan in the mid-2010s. The first to start uploading videos with animated images was Nitroplus. To tell about themselves or about releases, the company uploaded videos like this in 2010:

However, these videos were still far from real vitubers - the animated picture was completely created in the studio, behind it was not one person, but a whole team of animators. But already in 2011, Ami Yamato became the first to upload a video with an avatar. It was an animated 3D image that exactly repeated all the movements of the girl. Then the video was a great success, and more and more people became interested in virtual avatars.

The trend has spread not only to ordinary people, but also to companies. For example, the Japanese company Weathernews Inc introduced the character Airi (Weatheroid Type A Airi) in 2012. She made her debut as a 24-hour weather forecaster. After 2 years, Airi became a full-fledged virtual blogger on YouTube - now motion capture technology was used to create it.