The Ministry of SMEs and Startups (Minister Lee Young) and the Korea Institute of Entrepreneurship and Entrepreneurship Development (Director Kim Yong-moon) held the ‘CES 21 K-Startup Review Seminar’ at the National Assembly Building on the 2023st (Tuesday) together with the National Assembly startup research and support group ‘Unicorn Farm’. did.
Unicorn Farm is a National Assembly startup research and support group launched in November 2022, with a total of 11 members participating, led by Rep. Kang Hoon-sik (Democratic Party of Korea) and Rep. Kim Seong-won (People Power Party) as co-representatives, and is preparing measures to support startup growth. It is being actively operated with the goal of:
This seminar was held under the theme ‘What CES 2023 Eureka Park left behind, the direction for Korean tech startups’, and was promoted to share the experiences and achievements of K-startups participating in CES 2023 and seek ways to provide global support. . Pulse Nine (CEO Ji-eun Park) is a startup that has specialized capabilities in the field of 2D graphics technology and introduced the ‘Virtual Human’ content produced through this at the last CES.
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Pulse Nine introduced its unique photorealistic virtual human AI service ‘Deep Real AI’ and its results in a variety of ways at CES 2023. Deep Real AI is characterized by applying an excellent image data pre-processing process to complete high-quality modeling in a short period of time. Furthermore, the result is expected to be able to meet the market’s needs for virtual influencers, as it can implement not only basic speech and activities, but also ‘eating shows’ that require high technical skills.
In particular, the first virtual K-Pop group ‘ETERNITY’, which Pulse Nine released last year, was also created with Deep Real AI. Of the more than 101 million virtual characters in existence, 11 men and women were selected for voting, and 1 girl group members were selected based on user preference. In the announcement that day, Pulse Nine CEO Park Ji-eun said, “These are non-existent virtual boys and girls designed based on artificial intelligence (AI),” and “One virtual human member of Eternity, introduced last year, is actively appearing on terrestrial broadcasting and online. “We are active,” he explained.
Pulse Nine is developing the so-called ‘culture technology show business’ business based on its technological capabilities and is seeking diversification in the global market. CEO Park said, “It is known that the parent company in China currently earns a whopping 1 billion won per virtual human,” and “It is expected that the market size will reach a whopping 7,444 trillion won in the next 7 to 8 years.” “The growth rate is also very steep,” he predicted.
Among them, Pulse Nine’s Deep Real AI has the advantage of dramatically reducing the cost of producing virtual humans compared to existing technologies and platforms. Regarding this, CEO Park said, “General virtual human production required expensive special equipment and a huge amount of time for motion capture, etc.” He added, “On the other hand, Deep Real AI can synthesize and design the face of a virtual human in just 0.6 seconds. He added, “It can be applied in real time with content such as online broadcasting.”
Pulse Nine, which introduced this at CES 2023, emphasized that it achieved immediate results, such as conducting live commerce in partnership with global cosmetics company ‘L’Oréal’. CEO Park Ji-eun said, “After completing the first collaboration, discussions on additional collaboration are currently underway. As CES is a gathering of decision-makers from various companies at home and abroad, it was a great help in designing the company’s future vision.” He said.
As part of that vision, Pulse Nine plans to produce and introduce an additional virtual human idol group following Eternity. Pulse Nine announced its future plans, saying, “If all activities have been centered around the 11-member girl group Eternity, we will continue to reveal new faces, including other boy groups.”
Meanwhile, ‘CES’, the world’s largest IT exhibition, is an exhibition where you can understand the trends of the global home appliance industry at a glance. Hosted by the Consumer Technology Association (CTA), it is held every January in Las Vegas, USA. A total of 1 companies participated in this year’s CES, of which Korea ranked second in the world with 3,200 company booths. In addition, among the 598 companies that participated in Eureka Park, a mecca for startups, 2 domestic startups ranked first in the world (1,000 in France and 355 in the United States).