Anime Talking Heads

Media: 虎牙上线AI工业化形象生产系统，为主播提供个性化伴播形象

With the rapid development of the live streaming industry, users are demanding more personalized content and diverse interactive experiences. Providing streamers with customized virtual co-host characters has become a key innovation for live streaming platforms.

Recently, Huya Live introduced an AI-driven industrial-scale character production system on its streaming platform. This system intelligently generates virtual co-host characters for streamers, enhancing both viewer engagement and interactive experiences.

AI-Driven 2D Virtual Character Production: Efficiently Creating Unique Personalities for Every Streamer Huya’s newly launched AI industrial-scale character production system is the industry’s first AI-driven solution for large-scale 2D virtual character creation. The system employs two AI-powered pathways—autonomous learning and real-to-anime transformation—working in collaboration with art design teams to ensure the intelligent generation of personalized 2D virtual characters.

Each virtual co-host character is equipped with multiple facial expressions and actions, which can be automatically triggered by events such as gift-giving or audience entry. These AI characters are designed with exceptional expressiveness and dynamic performance.

To further enhance user interaction during live streams, each AI virtual character comes with a set of exclusive emojis. Once a streamer adopts a virtual co-host character, viewers in the livestream can use its unique emojis to send comments and interact with the streamer, creating a richer and more engaging experience for all participants.

Huya to Launch AI-Powered Intelligent Matching Module for Enhanced Live Room Aesthetics

Huya is reportedly preparing to launch an AI-powered intelligent matching module, which will automatically generate corresponding live room templates based on the settings of AI virtual co-host characters. This feature aims to enhance the aesthetic appeal and distinctiveness of live streaming rooms.

Zeng Xing, General Manager of Huya’s Live Streaming Product Department, stated that for streamers, exclusive virtual co-host characters help fulfill emotional expression needs, freeing them from being confined to the camera and allowing them to focus on delivering the best gameplay performance and streaming quality. For viewers, this feature provides a more interactive and engaging experience, especially when streamers are fully immersed in gameplay.

According to reports, the adoption rate of virtual co-host characters on Huya’s streamer platform has reached 18%, receiving widespread acclaim from both streamers and viewers.

From Standalone AI Capabilities to Integrated AI Solutions: Huya’s Proprietary Lightweight Anime-Driven Technology

For the generation of virtual co-host characters, Huya’s AI industrial-scale character production system employs advanced algorithms and proprietary encoders to achieve high-precision material segmentation and corresponding restoration, enabling real-time, highly personalized transformations for streamers. This approach not only increases the diversity and richness of virtual characters but also maximizes their resemblance to real humans, resulting in more vivid and emotionally expressive AI co-host characters.

To further enhance the clarity and performance of these virtual characters, Huya’s AI technology team developed a proprietary lightweight anime-driven system. This system integrates professionally designed art assets into an action library while meeting the technical requirements for driving AI virtual characters. Streamers can independently combine and present these assets, significantly improving the expressiveness and versatility of the virtual co-host characters.

In addition, to improve rendering capabilities and expand the scalability of co-host characters, Huya’s AI team restructured its rendering engine, unifying multiple engines under a single configuration. This solution ensures high-quality rendering effects, reduces development workloads, and simplifies subsequent system maintenance.

Meanwhile, Huya has integrated multiple standalone AI capabilities—such as generation, driving, segmentation, and rendering—into a comprehensive AI solution combined with artistic design. By merging its proprietary AI algorithm-driven engine with a native engine in a hybrid approach, Huya has achieved greater efficiency and stability in its products. This synergy ensures that the system operates with optimal performance, ultimately achieving a “1+1>2” effect.

“Huya’s AI team has accumulated extensive technical expertise in industrialized content production. The launch of the AI-driven industrial-scale character production system marks a successful integration of our AI technology research with live streaming scenarios,” said Xu Jia, Head of AI Technology at Huya. “In the future, we will further enhance our core AI capabilities, focusing on areas such as character generation, driving, and rendering, leveraging innovative AI technologies to drive product and business innovation.”

According to reports, Huya’s product and technical teams have filed 8 related patents and 2 software copyright applications for the AI industrial-scale character production system. Moving forward, Huya will continue to capitalize on its AI advantages, driving product innovation and creating top-tier digital interactive experiences for users.