AI Commercialization: Scenarios and Case Studies

From AI use cases observed at Amazon, problem-solving AI applications (“Practical AI”) offer two types of practical value: cost reduction with efficiency improvement, or delivering new experiences.

AI Emotional Companionship or Virtual Social Interaction

Target Audience: Looking at user groups, K-12 students, ACG (Animation, Comic, Game) enthusiasts, and otome game players are likely to become the core target users first. In China alone, core ACG users will reach 120 million by 2024, and with otome game players being an even larger group, there’s significant potential for user penetration and commercialization once products mature.

Product Forms: AI smart toys and AI role-playing/virtual social applications

Value Proposition: Compared to “friends” or “companions” in real life, AI is not only available for conversation anytime but can also respond instantly. With qualities like empathy, trustworthiness, and intimacy, AI can better soothe young people’s anxiety, depression, and loneliness. This is enhanced by interesting animations, sound effects, scenarios, and interactive gameplay.

AI Toy Market Overview

The AI toy market reached $18.1 billion in 2024 and is projected to grow to $60 billion globally by 2033, with the Asian market dominating. Currently available AI toys cover categories including robots, robotic pets, early education learning machines, plush toys, etc. The retail prices of these products vary significantly, ranging from around 100 yuan to thousands or even tens of thousands of yuan.

Major AI Toy Products

  1. ByteDance’s Internal Test “Eye-catching Package”: A blue and white plush toy embedded with Douban large language model, Kouzi Professional Edition, and other AI technologies that can engage in conversational interaction and emotional communication with people.

  2. Shenzhen Yueran Innovation’s BubblePal: Haivivi is the world’s first AIGC technology-based interactive pendant toy that can be attached to any plush toy. It generates conversational content through a structure combining foundational large models and vertical small models.

  3. FoloToy Series: As one of the earliest startups to achieve batch shipments of AI toys, they launched products like Fofo, Fofo-Huohuo Rabbit, and Meow-Mi Rabbit, with consumer shipments reaching 20,000 units as of November 2024.

AI Companion Applications

MiniMax

Shanghai Xiyu Technology Co., Ltd., one of the “six little dragons” of large model startups, focuses on consumer applications. Media predictions for 2024 suggest MiniMax’s actual annual revenue will likely exceed $70 million. The main source of this revenue comes from MiniMax’s overseas consumer AI application, Talkie.

Both Xinghe and Talkie are positioned as AI social software.

Xinghe (Domestic)

Xinghe’s success lies in using multimodal technology to create an immersive AI virtual social experience, capturing the market demand centered around domestic otome game users.

Launched in China in 2023, Xinghe APP has seen rapid user growth since its release, with monthly active users exceeding 10 million. The technology behind it comes from MiniMax, employing globally leading AIGC technology that can highly replicate users’ expected character settings, images, and voice tones.

  • User Base: Xinghe AI’s user base is highly diverse, including both ACG enthusiasts and ordinary people seeking emotional companionship. Its main user group is young people, especially otome game players and general ACG users.

  • Pricing Model: Xinghe AI’s business model mainly includes virtual currency “Star Diamond” recharges and “Star Moon Card” subscriptions. Subscription costs about 12 yuan per month.

  • Innovations:

    • Personalized customization: Users can customize virtual characters’ appearance, voice, personality, and background story
    • Deep emotional interaction: AI agents can recognize and respond to users’ emotions
    • Immersive experience: Through text, voice, and video interactions
    • UGC ecosystem: Xinghe encourages users to create and share content based on virtual characters

Read more about AI Commercialization in my full article series