Illustration: Xia Qing/GT
China has announced its first national standard for virtual digital humans, CCTV News reported on Thursday. This standard addresses the long-standing lack of uniform technical guidelines within the industry and provides clear requirements and benchmarks for customer service virtual human research, development, manufacturing, and applications.
This movement is not just an advancement in the virtual human sector. This highlights China's efforts to integrate artificial intelligence (AI) into real-world applications and foster new business models.
As an important carrier of AI applications, customer service-oriented virtual humans are gradually penetrating various fields such as e-commerce, finance, education, and healthcare. For example, in the e-commerce sector, virtual customer service provides 24/7 intelligent consultation, significantly increasing service response efficiency and customer satisfaction.
In the medical field, virtual humans support preliminary examinations and information gathering, reducing the burden on on-site medical resources. These applications will reshape traditional service processes while providing greater convenience and efficiency for consumers, becoming a positive innovation force in the digital economy.
However, virtual digital humans developed by different companies vary widely in terms of interactive experience and functional performance. These differences not only impacted the user experience, but also hindered coordinated development and large-scale applications across the industry.
Now that national standards are in place, companies have a clearer direction for product improvement and innovation. Specifically, the standard sets clear and measurable benchmarks, such as at least 90 percent accuracy for lip sync, 90 percent average success rate for gesture and body movement interactions, and at least 80 percent success rate for emotional interactions. These concrete metrics will help establish a common baseline for quality, build user trust, and support the responsible application of virtual humans across more scenarios.
The rapid growth of AI applications in China is largely driven by commercialization. But as virtual humans, an important use case for AI, break into new territory, challenges inevitably arise. Standards play an important role here. Standards help set fundamental requirements, prevent systemic risks, and ensure that innovation proceeds in a healthy and sustainable manner.
This focus on standardization is consistent with China's broader digital economy goals. The National Development and Reform Commission and the National Data Bureau clearly stated in the “2025 Digital Economy Development Work Highlights” that China will strengthen the core competitiveness of the digital economy and promote the closer integration of technological innovation and industrial innovation.
Quality development of the digital economy must be supported by a strong standards framework. According to the State Administration for Market Regulation, China has announced 30 AI national standards and 84 more standards are under development, covering areas from basic software and hardware to key technologies, industry applications, and security governance. These standards are increasingly viewed as guides and catalysts for innovation in related industries.
The true potential of general-purpose technologies such as AI lies in their deep integration with all sectors of the economy. However, such integration must not be chaotic or disorderly. It requires common interfaces, agreed protocols, and recognized quality benchmarks. Standards provide just that foundation.
The release of this virtual human standard marks a new starting point for China's exploration of new AI-powered business models.
Guided and protected by standards like these, AI technologies can power a variety of industries in safer, more reliable, and more efficient ways. This not only creates new service formats such as digital human live streaming and intelligent consulting, but also drives the entire digital economy towards higher quality and more sustainable development, continuously injecting new innovative energy into economic transformation.
