China-focused digital human papers from 2025 largely fall into three connected themes: improving visual fidelity and reconstructability of human faces and bodies from minimal capture, increasing controllability and expressiveness in animation and interaction, and studying how digitally embodied personas affect people in commerce and culture. Technical work emphasizes higher-quality monocular and single-image/video reconstruction, including methods that support efficient rendering, relighting, and more detailed head representation, and it also advances performance generation through speech-driven facial animation, more accurate mouth movement, and personalized emotional styling. In parallel, researchers contribute resources and frameworks for evaluating conversational and interactive digital humans, such as quality assessment data and baseline datasets, and they report system-level implementations that prioritize real-time Chinese-language interaction. Application studies concentrate on live-streaming, marketing, and e-commerce, analyzing how perceived intelligence, persona design, authenticity cues, and fit with audience expectations shape engagement and purchase intention, while also developing validated measurement scales for streamer attributes and service quality. Additional work extends to tourism and cultural heritage communication by examining how digital presenters influence travel intention and meaning-making, and ethics-focused research highlights the risks of emotionally persuasive design by treating simulated emotion and potential manipulation as central issues for responsible development and governance.
Bao, Y., Zhou, P., Qi, L., Qi, Y., & Li, H. (2025). FaceCLIP: CLIP-driven accurate and detailed 3D face reconstruction from a single image. Computational Visual Media.
Deng, G., Kang, J., He, L., & Xu, Y. (2025). Endorsing alone or with humans: Investigating the impact of virtual influencers’ presentation formats on endorsement effectiveness. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, 84, 104248.
Han, T., Zhou, B., Liu, A., Liang, Y., Zhang, D., & Lei, Z. (2025). PESTalk: Speech-Driven 3D Facial Animation with Personalized Emotional Styles. Proceedings of the 33rd.
Huang, Y. (2025). Research on lip synthesis of virtual digital humans based on the Spark large model. on Electronic Information Engineering and Data.
Jiang, L., & Li, M. (2025). Research on the impact path of virtual streamers characteristics on agricultural product consumers' purchase intention. Plos one.
KaiXing, W., Ki-Hong, K., & Yin, L. (2025). Museum Virtual Humans: The Intersection of Culture and the Sustainable Development Goals. Journal of Lifestyle and SDGs Review, 5(1), e03702-e03702.
Li, H., Li, W., & Ma, T. (2025). Exploring the mechanism of AI-powered virtual idols' intelligence level on digital natives' impulsive buying intention in e-commerce live streaming: A …. Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic.
Li, Y., Lin, Q., Luo, X., & Liu, B. (2025). Investigating the Impact of Virtual Streamers on the Engagement of Generation Z Consumers: The Moderating Effect of Congruence. Journal of Organizational and End User.
Liao, Z., Xu, Y., Li, Z., Li, Q., Zhou, B., & Bai, R. (2025). HHAvatar: Gaussian head avatar with dynamic hairs. on Pattern Analysis.
Liu, J. (2025). Virtual presence, real connections: Exploring the role of parasocial relationships in virtual idol fan community participation. Global media and China, 10(4), 490-511.
Qin, F., & Guo, X. (2025). Classifying and validating metahuman service quality dimensions: A mixed-method study. International Journal of Human–Computer.
Shen, T. (2023). The Commodification and Alienation of Vtubers in China. Lecture Notes in Education Psychology and Public Media, 3(1), 1022-1030.
Shen, Z. (2025). Interactive or not? Enhancing the interactive effectiveness of virtual brand ambassadors on consumer behavior. Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics.
Tang, Q., Liu, L., & Liu, Z. (2025). Understanding how the Chinese youth engages with virtual streamers in digital era: an approach of affordance. International Communication of Chinese Culture.
Wang, J., Xie, J., Li, X., Xu, F., & Pun, C. (2025). Gaussianhead: High-fidelity head avatars with learnable gaussian derivation. IEEE Transactions on.
Wang, P., Peng, H., Mao, S., Wang, S., & Tang, J. (2025). A review of generative models for virtual human motion driving. Science China Information.
Xiao, B., Peng, Y., & Feng, Y. (2024). Research on Digital Virtual Human Head Avatar Generation Technology with Cartoon Style. International Journal of Advanced Research in Computer Science, 15(6).
Xuanyuan, M., Wang, Y., Guo, H., & Qu, H. (2025). Creating Multimodal Interactive Digital Twin Characters From Videos: A Dataset and Baseline. on Pattern Analysis.
Yan, P., Ma, Y., Song, J., & Liu, J. (2025). Innovative Applications of Creative AI-Driven Virtual Digital Human Technology in Cultural Heritage Communication. of the 2025 International Conference on.
Yang, Y., Li, S., & Qiu, S. (2025). A Systematic Literature Review on the Negative Impacts of AI-generated Virtual Digital Humans. IEEE Access.
Ye, C., Wu, M., Ding, Y., & Fu, K. (2025). Realism or Emotional Simulation? An Ethical Perspective on the Emotional Manipulation Technologies of Virtual Idols. 2025 International Conference on.
Yin, G., Pei, Y., Farivar, S., Wang, F., & Wang, S. (2025). Virtual influencers in marketing: addressing authenticity challenges through anthropomorphism. Asia Pacific Journal of.
Yu, S., Huang, Y., Lin, S., & Tan, L. (2025). Design and Implementation of a High-Real-Time Chinese Digital Human Dialogue Platform. Proceedings of the 4th.
Yu, T., Teoh, A. P., Bian, Q., Liao, J., & Wang, C. (2025). Can virtual influencers affect purchase intentions in tourism and hospitality e-commerce live streaming? An empirical study in China. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 37(1), 216-238.
Zhang, L., Zhang, J., Wang, D., & Mu, J. (2025). Development and validation of an AI virtual streamer scale for live-streaming E-commerce. International Journal of Human.
Zhang, W., Xue, Y., & Tang, S. (2025). The impact of cultural tourism digital humans in China on tourists' travel intentions. Current issues in tourism.
Zhao, Y., Wu, C., Huang, B., Zhi, Y., & Zhao, C. (2025). Surfel-based Gaussian inverse rendering for fast and relightable dynamic human reconstruction from monocular videos. on Pattern Analysis.
Zhi, Y., Sun, W., Chang, J., Ye, C., & Feng, W. (2025). StruGauAvatar: Learning Structured 3D Gaussians for Animatable Avatars from Monocular Videos. IEEE Transactions on.
Zhong, L., Li, M., & Morrison, A. (2025). Semiotic analysis of metaverse digital humans and cultural communication. Journal of Hospitality and Tourism.
Zhou, T., & Li, S. (2025). Examining consumer impulsive purchase intention in virtual AI streaming: A SOR perspective. Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic.
Zhou, Y., Wan, J., Liu, S., Xia, Y., Lu, Z., & Wen, F. (2025). CDHQA: A Quality Assessment Database for Conversational Digital Human. Conference on Image.