2020 Virtual Beings Group China Timeline

2020 Virtual Beings Group China Timeline

2020, December - Multilingual AI news presenter delivers New Year’s greeting on behalf of a Chinese embassy (Trinidad & Tobago).
2020, December - “Virtual human” appears among Baidu’s top tech-related search keywords for 2020 (alongside things like mask facial recognition).
2020, December - Virtual idols reported as moving onto real-life stages in China (mainstream performance context).
2020, December - China-focused markerless motion-capture tech (YunBo) highlighted as supporting the virtual idol / avatar industry.
2020, December - Coverage notes “Adult” Xiaoice / Microsoft’s China AI efforts (virtual being commercialization context).
2020, December - A large-scale Chinese-centered multilingual language model is referenced (China NLP/LLM context).
2020, November - BBC reports China gives a musical talent show a “virtual makeover” (broadcast/entertainment virtualization).
2020, November - Microsoft announces strategic cooperation with spinoff Xiaoice; Xiaoice wraps up a pre-A financing round (industry structuring).
2020, November - TechCrunch notes Tencent Music Entertainment backing Wave to bring virtual entertainment to China.
2020, November - Bilibili hosts China’s first live concert featuring all VTuber entertainers (VUp ecosystem milestone).
2020, September - Luxury brands in China lean into virtual idol campaigns (brand marketing shift).
2020, August - “China unveils AI open-source platform” is referenced (platform/infrastructure push).
2020, August - Magnum China partners with a virtual human for a product launch campaign (commercial use of virtual humans).
2020, August - Xiao-i Robot debuts at an AI conference (enterprise conversational AI presence).
2020, July - China develops a Mongolian-speaking AI anchor in Inner Mongolia and puts it into use via a local media platform (minority-language AI media).
2020, July - CNBC references Microsoft spinning off a “virtual teenager” chatbot for Chinese users (consumer virtual being productization).
2020, June - Vogue Business notes brands eye China’s virtual idols (market attention).
2020, June - “LING: China’s first AI virtual influencer” circulates (virtual influencer milestone reference).
2020, June - Vsinger / Chinese VOCALOID ecosystem is highlighted (virtual singer infrastructure context).
2020, May - PR Newswire reports XMOV unveils “China’s first AI virtual influencer” (virtual influencer milestone claim).
2020, May - Reports say Xinhua reveals its first AI-powered newsreader using 3D modeling (“world’s first 3D AI anchor” framing).
2020, May - Sogou “world’s first 3D AI news anchor” is referenced (synthetic news anchor evolution).
2020, May - Forbes/industry links discuss virtual fashion / digital luxury experiences touching China audiences.
2020, April - Article asks how virtual influencers and avatars could change Chinese e-commerce (virtual commerce adoption).
2020, April - HTC developer conference programming emphasizes 5G as a catalyst for VR adoption (XR acceleration narrative).
2020, March - AI-powered smart glasses described as China’s latest weapon against Covid-19 (pandemic tech adoption).
2020, March - “Physical distancing boosts AI-powered online education in China” (remote education scaling).
2020, March - AR tools discussed as enabling companies to work during the coronavirus outbreak (remote work enablement).
2020, February - Communist Youth League removes a virtual idol project after feminist criticism (cultural/political sensitivity around virtual idols).
2020, January - Sogou launches AI-powered simultaneous interpretation 3.0 (multimodal cognition / speech tech product update).