ESTsoft (CEO Chung Sang-won), a company specializing in AI services, announced on the 31st that it has signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with n.CH Entertainment (executive producer Chung Chang-hwan) to develop virtual human entertainers.
With this agreement ESTsoft extends its virtual human business into acting and modeling, after announcers, instructors and singers, giving concrete shape to the plan it announced earlier this year to specialize in a virtual human agency business as its core business.
n.CH Entertainment, which signed the agreement with ESTsoft, was founded by executive producer Chung Chang-hwan, a former CEO of SM C&C, and is expanding rapidly by signing promising talent from audition programs and through other moves. It recently signed an exclusive contract with Hallyu star Noh Min-woo, an actor and singer, and has begun its move into global markets in earnest alongside a successful Japan tour. Its current roster includes top-10 finishers from 'Tomorrow's National Singer', the girl group NATURE and actor Woo Da-bi.
Held at ESTsoft's headquarters with executives and officials from both companies present, the agreement centers on producing virtual human entertainers to appear on online platforms and in the metaverse, and on pursuing joint business.
At the signing the two companies also agreed to pursue a joint project to present entirely new virtual human entertainers, as well as to create virtual human versions of existing celebrities.
The joint project in particular involves the two companies jointly creating and commercializing new virtual human-based IP; to that end they agreed to make active use of ESTsoft's person-generation technology, AI Persona, together with image, voice and video data of n.CH Entertainment's artists.
The two companies also plan to continue cooperating on many fronts for the project's success, including additional filming of n.CH Entertainment's artists at ESTsoft's dedicated studio to secure the cleaned AI training data needed for high-quality virtual human production.
n.CH Entertainment executive producer Chung Chang-hwan said: "We are very pleased to have signed a business agreement with ESTsoft, which holds virtual human production technology at the highest level in Korea," adding, "We will make sure this project succeeds, so as to create added value through our artists' global expansion and wider points of contact with fans."
ESTsoft CEO Chung Sang-won said: "This agreement with n.CH Entertainment, which holds IP across many fields including singers, actors and models, gives our virtual human agency business much more concrete shape," adding, "We will move quickly to advance our technology and systematize our service so that, through the virtual human production and operation platform ESTsoft provides, the potential in this IP can grow and evolve explosively."
ESTsoft, meanwhile, secured exclusive domestic and international IP rights in February for CLASS:y, the idol group from MBC's audition program 'My Teenage Girl', for virtual human production, and followed that in April with a business agreement with music trading platform Sell By Music to produce a virtual human musician. It is also in discussions on virtual human production with news broadcasters and education and finance companies.
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