Supporters of Marcus Endicott’s Patreon can access weekly or monthly video consultations on this topic.
Xiaoice (北京小冰科技有限公司), also referred to as Xiaobing Company (小冰公司) and branded in English as “Xiaoice/Xiaobing,” is a China- and Japan-facing AI company focused on emotionally interactive digital humans and the production systems behind them, including enterprise “digital employees” that combine a consistent persona, conversational intelligence, voice, and a controllable avatar for customer-facing and internal work scenarios. The company provides neural rendering technologies, customizable virtual employees, and 24/7 digital livestreaming solutions used across media, government, e-commerce, automotive, and entertainment, and it positions its AI Being framework as a productized approach to virtual humans rather than one-off CG characters. Within this stack, Xiaoice highlights lifelike avatars with multi-expression, multi-costume, and multi-action capabilities, alongside zero-shot and small-sample generation, voice cloning, and natural language interaction, supporting deployments ranging from enterprise digital staff platforms and virtual customer service agents to long-duration livestreaming through brand partnerships such as Huaxizi. Its portfolio also includes consumer-facing products such as X Eva, presented as an AI companion and entertainment application, while the company continues to expand its lineup of AI-generated characters and business-oriented digital personas. Xiaoice originated as Microsoft’s Xiaoice project and was spun out as an independent company in July 2020, with Microsoft retaining an interest, and a widely cited example of its enterprise positioning is Cui Xiaopan, a digital employee created for real-estate developer Vanke that Chinese media described as handling bill-related reminders and follow-ups with high case-resolution performance and receiving internal recognition. The company presents itself as operating across hubs including Beijing and Suzhou, with a Japan presence in Tokyo, reflecting its continued emphasis on consumer-scale interaction systems and enterprise digital human deployments as a “digital labor” interface for service, marketing, and communications workflows.
(In usage, “Xiaoice” and “Xiaobing” refer to the same company and technology brand, with “Xiaoice” used as the English romanization and “Xiaobing” used as the pinyin-style rendering of “小冰.”)