In the Chinese corporate database Tianyancha, nearly one million digital avatar companies are registered, with over 400,000 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 fundamental assumptions of what a broadcaster is, and who can be one.
What is happening in China
Douyin, TikTok's Chinese sister platform, currently operates an ecosystem that merges entertainment, content, and commerce in a single stream. The user does not 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 so far: 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 Digital Human technology based on its own platform data: According to a corporate 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, more than 100,000 digital hosts were being deployed on the Baidu platform alone, across 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 stands out in particular: Government institutions such as the Chinese state broadcaster CCTV, the Xinhua news agency, and the state railway have entered livestream commerce — systematically leveraging their public trust accumulated over decades as sales capital. This is no coincidence. It is a strategic decision: those who possess credibility can deploy it. This insight is at least as relevant for companies outside of China.
What this has to do with broadcasters
Linear television broadcasters have built up something over decades that businesses outside the media industry rarely had: a reliable broadcasting rhythm. A channel runs. Daily. At fixed times. With recognizable formats. This principle generates something that no single piece of content can achieve: expectation.
This is precisely the structural performance of the AI digital human format. It makes broadcasting continuity practically achievable for companies for the first time. Not because the content automatically becomes good. But because the barrier to broadcasting daily is radically lowered.
A human presenter needs preparation, energy, and 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 businesses
The promise of the AI digital human is not to replace human communication. It is to scale broadcasting presence that would otherwise not be possible.
Let us think of concrete use cases: A medium-sized mechanical engineering company providing its sales regions in three countries with a short weekly product update, 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 cannot be himself.
None of these are science fiction scenarios. They are decisions that can be made today.
The principle behind it
What broadcasters have known for decades: Reach is not the result of individual major 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 lacked the resources to think like a broadcaster. That is the actual 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 communication, let's talk about it in our AI Avatar Consulting.
