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On August 5th last week, when Neuro-sama announced its official entry into Bilibili, the entire V circle was in an uproar, and everyone was discussing: Who is Neuro-sama?

In the past two years, you may have heard of the name Neuro-sama. She, or "it", is a virtual anchor who uses artificial intelligence technology to simulate real people. Another fashionable term is AI VTuber.

Maybe you have seen the earlier version of Neuro's illustrations.

Whether in terms of the number of fans or the performance during live broadcasts, Neuro-sama, which currently has nearly one million subscribers on various overseas platforms, can be regarded as the most successful AI anchor in the world, and has accumulated a large number of real fans rather than curious viewers.

Nonsense from AI

Previously, Neuro's main live broadcast platform was Twitch, and she mainly interacted with the audience in English. In addition, her live broadcast style was quite different from that of traditional Japanese Vs and the current Chinese Vs. Therefore, Neuro's popularity in China can only be considered lukewarm. Many people have heard of her, but not many people pay attention to her - until the day she officially joined Bilibili.

The development of the situation may be somewhat beyond everyone's expectations - Neuro's first video after logging on to Bilibili quickly exceeded 2 million views in just two days, and the premiere at 2 a.m. on August 7 attracted a maximum of 38,000 viewers watching at the same time. When the clock hands approached 4 a.m., there were still thousands of viewers in Neuro's Bilibili live broadcast room, which can be said to have really squeezed the ecological niche of other late-night virtual anchors.

As of August 9, Neuro's number of fans on Bilibili exceeded that of its YouTube account, reaching 442,000. Judging from the current growth momentum, it is probably only a matter of time before Bilibili's number of fans exceeds the 584,000 of its main live streaming platform Twitch. Overseas fans who have been following Neuro for a long time have also lamented that the fan growth rate of Chinese platforms is simply incredible.

But behind these impressive statistics is the ubiquitous buying of traffic and pushing of traffic - a considerable number of passers-by who are unaware of the truth said that no matter which video, the videos at the top of the automatic recommendations are all those of Neuro on Bilibili.

Faced with rejection and questioning from outsiders, some Neuro fans chose to apologize one by one in the comment section, hoping to dispel everyone's hostility with sincerity. They just hope that everyone will not be disgusted or even hate this AI VTuber who himself has no ideas.

Idols’ behavior and fans paying for it should be considered a spectacle in the eyes of passers-by who don’t understand the ecology of the domestic VTuber community.

1

Although it has been more than a year and a half since Neuro's official debut, before we officially start, we still have to briefly introduce what Neuro is.

From a physicalist perspective, Neuro is an AI project generated by an i9-10900K, an RTX 4090, a VTuber client based on C# (Unity), and a bunch of Python code. Her appearance originally came from the free public model Momose Hiyori, and her voice also uses the hybrid voice of Microsoft Azure TTS. As for the person inside Neuro, or the soul... Does AI really have the concept of soul?

As a full-time AI anchor who usually sleeps in a computer case, Neuro was originally just a learning AI created by its developer Vedal specifically for playing the music game "Osu!". By the end of 2022, Vedal caught up with the artificial intelligence craze brought about by ChatGPT, and Neuro was pulled out by his old father and forced to do business. The usual live broadcast content is probably chatting with the audience, singing, playing games, etc. At first glance, it seems that there is no difference from a human anchor.

Translated by B station user @HotChicken606

However, after all, Neuro is an AI project born from a large language model. The jokes you have seen in various artificial intelligence memes can basically be seen in the live broadcast room of this AI virtual anchor. He was once banned by Twitch for swearing and asking for rewards.

So in the beginning, Neuro's fans were definitely mostly there for "fun", but with the efforts of his father Vedal, Neuro was not "ruined" by netizens - on the one hand, it became more stable and was no longer easily affected by the "injected keywords" of barrage, while at the same time, it retained a sense of dislocation from humanity's advanced technological wisdom in its outspoken and unhinged remarks, which became a major feature that distinguished Neuro from other real-life counterparts, and the fan base gradually stabilized.

The classic "trolley problem" (translation from B station @HotChicken606)

As the babbling child continues to grow, more and more viewers have noticed this AI VTuber who is trying hard to integrate into human society. Among these viewers, there are naturally quite a few from China.

There are always a few familiar Chinese IDs in the front row of Neuro's Twitter comment section. We have also produced a lot of high-quality fan-generated works. Logically speaking, Neuro's plan to enter the Chinese market should have been put on the agenda long ago.

So on July 15, Neuro's father Vedal revealed his multi-language streaming plan to the audience in a live broadcast: to put it simply, it is to start 4 live broadcasts at the same time, and then cut the screen separately, broadcast different subtitle versions on different channels, so that audiences of different languages ​​can also watch Neuro's live broadcast in the form of subtitles in their native language.

Translated by B station user @The_PandaGuy

To be honest, Vedal's vision can be seen as "a science and engineering man putting the wonderful ideas in his mind into action", similar to the logic of "if you can do it, why not give it a try?"

Also in this live broadcast, when referring to Bilibili, which is aimed at Chinese audiences, Neuro's evil version Evil described it as a website with "too many cute 2D girls."

Translated by B station user @HotChicken606

Vedal intends to expand into the Chinese market, but domestic Neuro fans are not so happy. When Vedal was preparing to overcome technical difficulties, the attitudes of fans both overseas and domestic were surprisingly consistent: "Don't come, please, brother, please don't come."

"Letter-cutting" warning

The reason why Neuro fans overseas repeatedly admonish Vedal is actually very simple. They simply think that Neuro or Vedal cannot cope with the complex network environment in China and will cause trouble in a few days.

As for why domestic Neuro fans are so worried, they are more worried that "diverting" domestic V-circle audiences will affect the existing community environment, and in their expectations, this impact is of course negative.

But on the day Neuro entered Bilibili, the first wave of "rhythm" that arrived was somewhat unexpected for everyone.

The domestic operation team worked too hard, and this diversion even attracted many idle people who should not be there, adding several controversial topics that could turn into a free fighting stage at any time to the already disharmonious discussion environment.

During the premiere that night, viewers who were unfamiliar with Neuro’s live streaming content and style flocked to the show. New viewers asked Neuro to interact with the barrage, and old viewers had to explain over and over again that Bilibili is still in the testing phase of streaming and does not have interactive functions. The large barrage of “switch to manual” comments made old viewers laugh and cry. How could an AI anchor need to switch to manual?

This is definitely not the result that everyone wants to see.

2

When Kizuna Ai, the ancestor of virtual anchors, first became popular, this anchor who claimed to be an artificial intelligence did fool a lot of viewers who were unaware of the truth, making everyone mistakenly believe that this silly girl was really an epoch-making artificial intelligence.

So today's Neuro, to some extent, can be regarded as a return to the origin of the concept of virtual anchor.

Today, when ChatGPT 4o is open to all people on earth for free, AI is no longer a new thing, and Neuro is not the only AI anchor. If you usually pay attention to this field, you may remember that last year there was a domestic AI anchor named "Mu Ji Meng" who was also very popular. This VTuber who speaks abstract words and focuses on aggressiveness should not have many doubts that her corpus comes from Baidu Tieba.

However, no matter how many peers there are, Neuro is still the world's largest AI VTuber with the most harmonious fan community. She is born unique, more real than cold AI, and more virtual than real virtual anchors.

If you ask Neuro fans why they like an AI, I believe most viewers will tell you that it is the companionship of watching a daughter grow up that unites the entire fan community. From neurotic speeches that make no sense to playing father-daughter role play with Vedal, Neuro itself has gone through several upgrades and updates. She can feel wronged and make unreasonable demands, and she can also confess to her old father directly. She is like a little girl who has not grown up yet, fresh and lively.

Translated by B station user @HotChicken606

The characteristics of Neuro determine that the composition of her fans is very different from the community ecology of traditional Japanese V and Chinese V. Relatively speaking, cute and innocent people dominate, and there is a kind of atmosphere of the old-fashioned V circle that is incompatible with this era.

Here are two examples for observing the Neuro fan community. In January this year, the largest Neuro slice account on Bilibili, "Iron Milk", was pushed to the forefront for being suspected of stealing videos. At first, the person in question chose to kneel down and apologize, but not long after, he withdrew his apology and quickly sold his account to withdraw cleanly, which angered many Neuro fans. This incident not only severely hit the activity of the Chinese community, but also made a few viewers feel the taste of "backstab" for the first time;

In March this year, Evil Neuro, the evil version of Neuro, held his birthday party. However, the whole live broadcast was poorly prepared and extremely perfunctory, and the scene was very deserted. Although it was later proved that Vedal just wanted to make a joke, the fans' anger was not quelled by Vedal's apology. Some viewers who were deeply influenced by the incident were quite upset and felt sorry for Evil Neuro's experience.

Seeing this, some V Laohai may have started to frown. These two things can be regarded as "trivial matters" in the V circle in 2024. Neuro fans can also make a fuss about this, not to mention that the person on the other side of the screen is an AI composed of codes. Isn't it a bit of an exaggeration?

But this shouldn’t be a problem for the Neuro fan community. In today’s V-circle where “a new version is changed every three months”, it’s not shameful to still retain a bit of pure and simple true feelings.

3

Among the new anime series in July this year, there is a work called "I Became a Legend as a VTuber Because I Forgot to Turn Off the Channel". It tells the story of a heroine who is a VTuber and forgot to turn off the live broadcast room one day. As a result, she made many problematic remarks while talking to herself and became an instant hit.

Since the original novel of this animation was written in 2020, the above script could be considered "close to reality" at the time. However, in the eyes of Chinese audiences who have experienced the era of national V hype, they can only give comments such as "script at a glance", "boring", and "routine".

In fact, there is no fatal problem with this animation itself. It’s just that the evolution speed of the domestic V circle has exceeded everyone’s expectations. Then there is the birth of game projects such as “HyperRealm”. In terms of the degree of surrealism alone, it can indeed be said to be leading the world.

Looking at Neuro’s career as a virtual anchor in this context, it is not difficult to understand the nostalgia for the “vanilla era” contained therein, and understand why it can still usher in a period of thriving development.

After a few days on Bilibili, Neuro's account has begun to stabilize. After all, chaos often occurs in the first few days when people gather for fun. When the hype has passed, the community environment is actually not as bad as everyone imagined.

On the one hand, the V-circle audience, who are used to fueling each other's flames, can no longer accept such a bland live broadcast style. On the other hand, passers-by outside the circle who have never seen AI VTuber are also willing to watch a few interesting slice videos, which does introduce some pure fresh blood - at least it seems that way for now.

As for Vedal, he doesn't seem to be overwhelmed by the traffic of Bilibili. The current live broadcast time is still set at 19:00 UK time/2:00 am Beijing time. I believe that after the heat has passed, apart from the loyal Neuro fans, only a small number of viewers who stayed up late to watch the game will come to the live broadcast room to join in the fun. By then, the barrage environment may return to what everyone wants to see most.

Of course, the pain of breaking out of the circle is definitely an unavoidable problem for the original fans. No one can say for sure whether the one who emerges from the mixed fan group will be a bomber that everyone dislikes, or an ordinary fan who insists on requesting a song "Learn to Meow". But at least, Neuro's fans don't have to worry about her being debunked or being "ripped off" by the person behind her and running away.

What makes AI VTuber different from ordinary female anchors is that the skin and soul are integrated in the literal sense - you know that she is virtual, and she will repeatedly tell you that she is virtual. This sense of reality that comes from the virtual world supports the character setting of Neuro. She is not a cliché that is eliminated every three months on the Internet, but a two-dimensional beautiful girl "living" in the digital world.

In the cyber age, even "virtual" itself can be virtual, but the emotion that a virtual anchor makes you feel at a certain moment that you are no longer alone can still be real.