Disclaimer : It is completely understandable if you are uninterested in Vtuber, I am not your kpop or weeb mentor or anything. I just wanted to clear couple things up.
If you choose to stay out of Vtuber interest, you are free to do so, just stop spreading ‘oh that AI thing’ cause most of time they are not and the AI branding is just another corporate buzzword applied incorrectly.
Also forgive me talking like scientist on a podcast trying hard to avoid in concrete terms because this is a relatively new industry with very few rules.
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1st and most important. Like I said, Vtubers are (in 99% of cases) NOT AI. Often the company would claim as such, as AI is new capitalism buzz word.
However, in absolute majority of cases they are more like, a puppet. There is someone acting behind what you see, just not that apparent.
AI : meaningless buzzword thesedays Metaverse : another buzzword to sell anything that has digital avatar as some fancy tool. Vtubers : Acting person behind a digital avatar. Vocaloid : FL studio-ish program with anime package
Even in cases where there isn’t one actor to point to, its more like Groot. Tons of people working on pre-fabricated stuff instead of some magic AI.
There are some actually legit AI ran vtubers but they are experimental.
Now, that out of the way, you may ask, then how do the actors stay hidden? Well this is a touchy subject. Most of times they are under some agreement to not reveal themselves.
But in a lot of cases, if the actor was actually involved in idol or streamer business prior, it isn’t that hard to figure whose voice the actor is. In this case, it is considered polite to not to post about it in public space.
This can work as to protect the actors’ private lives. However human beings suck and sometimes the mystery encourages someone to cyber-stalk those actors that may lead into actual stalking.
Also not all Vtubers seek to be idol or claim as one. The line is somewhat blurry.
Majority if case is that many vtubers who are completely uninterested in idol activies such as singing or dancing, and are basically just streamers.
While on the other side of spectrum there are idols who just happen to use vtuber technology.
Last thing that is kinda hard to grasp, even for me, is that people get attached to the actor and the roleplay character at same time. So the very obvious concept of ‘oh what if they just replace the actor to continue the character’ doesn’t seem to work out except in very few cases. But there are some cases where it is accepted and is part of fandom joke thing. Honestly I don’t understand how and why it doesn’t work most of time but sometimes it just do.
submitted by /u/OwlOfJune
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