VTubers, digital personas represented by animated avatars, have gained massive popularity. Traditionally, VTubers are operated and voiced by human controllers known as Nakanohito. The reliance on Nakanohito, however, poses risks due to potential personal controversies and operational disruptions. The emergence of AI-driven VTubers offers a new model free from these human constraints. While AI-driven VTubers present benefits such as continuous operation and reduced scandal risk, they also raise questions about authenticity and audience engagement. Therefore, to gain deeper insights, we conduct a case study, investigating viewer perceptions of Neuro-sama, the most popular AI-driven VTuber with 845k followers on Twitch and 753k followers on YouTube. We analyze 108k Reddit posts and 136k YouTube comments, aiming to better understand viewer motivations, how AI constructs the virtual persona, and perceptions of the AI as Nakanohito. Our findings enhance the understanding of AI-driven VTubers and their impact on digital streaming culture.

How is identity constructed and performed in the digital via face-based artificial intelligence technologies? While questions of identity on the textual Internet have been thoroughly explored, the Internet has progressed to a multimedia form that not only centers the visual, but specifically the face. At the same time, a wealth of scholarship has and continues to center the topics of surveillance and control through facial recognition technologies (FRTs), which have extended the logics of the racist pseudoscience of physiognomy. Much less work has been devoted to understanding how such face-based artificial intelligence technologies have influenced the formation and performance of identity. This literature review considers how such technologies interact with faciality, which entails the construction of what a face may represent or signify, along axes of identity such as race, gender, and sexuality. In grappling with recent advances in AI such as image generation and deepfakes, I propose that we are now in an era of "post-facial" technologies that build off our existing culture of facility while eschewing the analog face, complicating our relationship with identity vis-á-vis the face. Drawing from previous frameworks of identity play in the digital, as well as trans practices that have historically played with or transgressed the boundaries of identity classification, we can develop concepts adequate for analyzing digital faciality and identity given the current landscape of post-facial artificial intelligence technologies that allow users to interface with the digital in an entirely novel manner. To ground this framework of transgression, I conclude by proposing an interview study with VTubers -- online streamers who perform using motion-captured avatars instead of their real-life faces -- to gain qualitative insight on the experience and perceptions of users of post-facial technologies and how these sociotechnical experiences interface with our relationships with identity and the digital anew.

Twitch has come under fire after a misguided tweet celebrating the achievements of VTubers in 2022 compared the virtual creators to artificial intelligence (AI), with many top talents labeling the wording as "insulting" and ignorant of the medium. VTubing has taken off on Twitch, cracking into the top five tags on the platform in 2022. To show their respect for the virtual medium's growth across the year, they put together a little video highlighting top creators and their work. However the caption attached to the tweet has riled up VTubers, with the platform comparing the real creators behind the avatars to artificial intelligence. "The VTuber tag brought both avatars and viewers together in one great space, with VTubers growing and creating AI like never before," it read.

Kizuna AI plays games, cooks, and even answers her viewers' questions. She sings, too, moonlighting as a pop star with millions of views on her music video. Kizuna AI is like any other influencer on YouTube, except she's not real. But it's not strictly accurate to say she's a standalone, completely digital entity born from the chaos of the internet. Kizuna AI is voiced by a human actress and produced by a character designer, 3D modeler, and an anonymous team.

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.

Every day is Halloween for Virtual YouTubers or "VTubers" -- the new generation of wildly popular online entertainers whose voices and actions are represented in real time by colourful and expressive anime characters. Now, a Google researcher has released a deep neural network model that makes animating a VTube persona a little easier. Using motion capture systems to transfer human movements to cartoon characters in real-time is a process that can be traced back to the 90s. The approach however was not popularized, and the term "Virtual YouTuber" did not enter our vocabulary until the virtual character "Kizuna AI" debuted in 2016. Kizuna is a cute young girl with wide eyes and a pink butterfly bow perched atop her long flowing hair -- any otaku's dream.

Every day is Halloween for Virtual YouTubers or "VTubers" -- the new generation of wildly popular online entertainers whose voices and actions are represented in real time by colourful and expressive anime characters. Now, a Google researcher has released a deep neural network model that makes animating a VTube persona a little easier. Using motion capture systems to transfer human movements to cartoon characters in real-time is a process that can be traced back to the 90s. The approach however was not popularized, and the term "Virtual YouTuber" did not enter our vocabulary until the virtual character "Kizuna AI" debuted in 2016. Kizuna is a cute young girl with wide eyes and a pink butterfly bow perched atop her long flowing hair -- any otaku's dream.

Kizuna Ai, the most popular streamer in Japan, is an anatomically exaggerated, perpetually adolescent girl in frilly thigh-high socks and a pink hair ribbon. She's also an entirely virtual character, given life by the actions and voice of an invisible actress. In the home of anime and "Ghost in the Shell" futurism, millions now follow Kizuna Ai online, and that success has spawned thousands of copycat acts and a cottage industry catering to so-called virtual YouTubers, or VTubers. Defying the Western streamer blueprint of young male gamers like PewDiePie and Ninja, Japan has invented a new class of streaming star that's equal parts digital avatar and interactive anime. "What separates VTubers from regular anime characters is that you can believe they actually exist," said Takeshi Osaka, founder of Activ8 Inc., the Tokyo-based company behind Kizuna Ai. "That presence is an important part of what makes them so appealing."

YouTube erected a platform where commoners could climb the ladder to stardom. Now, the video-sharing giant is seeing another wave of new talent diving into a glittering entertainment scene. These entertainers are called "virtual YouTubers," or "VTubers," and are represented by digital avatars that look like anime characters. Almost exclusively a Japanese phenomenon, at least so far, these virtual talents have proliferated rapidly over the past several months and people in the industry, together with observers, predict the movement will only accelerate. Following are some questions and answers about virtual YouTubers.