His followers were suitably wowed – until some started to question if such a feat was humanly possible. The small print on the video stream confirmed their suspicions: "For display purposes only, not a real person." Many of Chen's fans were outraged, and he reportedly lost more than 7,000 followers between 24 and 26 September. Even the legal community weighed in. Quoted in Chinese media reports, Dong Yuanyuan, a senior partner at Tiantai, a Beijing law firm, said that AI avatars could not be "completely untied from the celebrity himself" and that "virtual live broadcasts … do not exempt celebrities from legal liability".

Mayu Iizuka sheds her soft-spoken personality and starts cackling, screaming and waving wildly in a makeshift studio in Tokyo as her avatar appears on a livestream before hundreds of fans. Virtual YouTubers like Iizuka, who voices and animates a character called Yume Kotobuki, have transformed a niche Japanese subculture into a thriving industry where top accounts can rake in more than a million dollars (¥130 million) a year. The videos are designed to make fans feel as if they are interacting directly with their favorite animated idols -- with some viewers paying hundreds of dollars to have a single comment highlighted during a livestream. "When I'm playing video games on my channel and succeed at something, my fans congratulate me" and pay tips "as a way to show their support and appreciation," Iizuka told AFP. The 26-year-old uses a laptop, webcam and a motion sensor worn around her neck to appear on screen as Yume, whose facial expressions are controlled by a producer. With her squeaky voice, short skirt and huge purple eyes, Iizuka's avatar follows a popular model for "VTuber" characters, which often resemble the hyperfeminine heroines of Japanese anime.