In the Chinese corporate database Tianyancha, nearly one million digital avatar companies are registered, with over 400,000 of them founded in the past year alone. Not with production teams. Not with human hosts. But with AI-generated digital avatars that interact with target audiences and customers, explaining products without pause, without sick days, without setup time.
What sounds like a trend is already operational reality in Asia. And it is currently changing the basic assumptions of what a broadcaster is, and who can be one.
What is happening in China
Douyin, TikTok's Chinese sister platform, now operates an ecosystem that combines entertainment, content, and commerce into a single stream. The user doesn't scroll to a product—they discover it because the algorithm embeds it into their attention stream. The principle is called Interest Commerce: it is not search intent that determines what someone sees, but their behavioral profile.
In this ecosystem, AI-powered virtual hosts have developed into a dominant format. The most famous example to date: On June 15, 2025, Chinese tech entrepreneur Luo Yonghao broadcasted on Baidu's e-commerce platform Youxuan—not in person, but as a digital avatar of himself. The six-hour stream with two synchronized AI avatars, Luo and his co-host Xiao Mu, attracted over 13 million viewers according to Baidu and TechNode, and generated revenue equivalent to around 7.6 million dollars. In the core categories of electronics and food, the avatar stream even outperformed Luo's own human debut stream from the previous month. (Sources: TechNode, June 17, 2025; CNBC, June 19, 2025)
Baidu itself quantifies the impact of its human digital technology based on its own platform data: according to a company report from June 2025, using their AI hosts reduces operating costs for live broadcasts by over 80 percent and increases average revenue per stream by 62 percent. By the end of 2025, over 100,000 digital hosts were being used on the Baidu platform alone, spanning more than 30 industries.
The big picture: according to a report by Eurasia Review, over 1.14 million companies in China have now adopted AI-powered virtual hosts for livestreaming. One development is particularly striking: state institutions such as the Chinese state broadcaster CCTV, the Xinhua news agency, and the state railway have entered livestream commerce—specifically using the public trust they have accumulated over decades as sales capital. This is no coincidence. It is a strategic decision: those who possess credibility can use it. This insight is at least as relevant for companies outside of China.
What this has to do with broadcasters
Linear television stations have built up something over decades that companies outside the media industry rarely had: a reliable broadcasting rhythm. A channel is running. Daily. At fixed times. With recognizable formats. This principle generates something that isolated content cannot achieve: expectation.
This is precisely the structural achievement of the AI-digital human format. For the first time, it makes broadcasting continuity practically feasible for businesses. Not because the content automatically becomes good. But because the hurdle to broadcast daily drops radically.
A human host needs preparation, energy, time. A digital avatar does not. It is available when the target audience is available—even at 10 PM, even on Sundays, even in multiple languages simultaneously.
What this means for companies
The promise of the AI digital human is not to replace human communication. It is to scale external presence that would otherwise not be possible.
Let us think of concrete use cases: A medium-sized mechanical engineering company that provides its sales regions in three countries with a short weekly product update daily, always at the same time, always in the same format, always with the same digital face of the brand. Not because something new happens every day, but because reliability itself is the message.
Or a consulting firm that does not package its expertise in PDF white papers, but broadcasts it in a weekly avatar format. Or a family business that transfers the personality of its founder into a digital format—not to replace him, but to make his voice present where he himself cannot be.
All of these are not science fiction scenarios. These are decisions that can be made today.
The principle behind it
What broadcasters have known for decades: reach is not the result of single, large pieces of content. It is the result of continuity. Those who broadcast regularly are expected. Those who are expected are heard. Those who are heard build trust.
And those who have trust should use it—before someone else does.
The AI digital human makes this principle accessible to companies that previously had no resources to think like a broadcaster. This is the real news from Asia—not the technology itself, but what it makes possible.
If you would like to explore what a digital avatar can do for your corporate communications, let's talk about it in our AI Avatar Consultation.
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AI in the Loop: The content of this article was developed using AI-supported research and editorially evaluated. The texts were accelerated with AI and written by our experts. All figures, data, and facts are backed by sources. Themes and positions correspond to our experiences, consultations, and offers.
