The entertainment track adds another dark horse-level app - Viggle AI, with the AI animation product founded by Chinese gaining over 3 million members

After experiencing a period of rapid popularity, the generative AI product sector, including text-to-image, text-to-video, and image-to-video applications, has not seen a new product breakthrough recently. However, after closely monitoring app rankings across various countries, we noticed that the AI animation generation product Viggle, which was launched less than two months ago, has seen a surge in downloads, entering the top ten entertainment app rankings in 13 countries and regions worldwide.

According to data from Diandian, Viggle was launched on June 26 of this year and has seen a steady rise in download numbers ever since. On August 6, its global daily downloads reached 35,000, and in countries like Thailand, it even climbed into the top ten of the download charts.

We previously observed the AI dance app Boogie AI, which gained significant popularity in the United States. Its gameplay and design are quite similar to Viggle, as both combine entertainment with AI technology to create short videos that go viral on platforms like TikTok.

Viggle's animated videos have been widely shared on TikTok.

However, after thoroughly studying Viggle's gameplay and target audience, we found that it has a broader appeal compared to Boogie AI, with a more unique product design. In addition to catering to regular users, Viggle, as an AI entertainment product, also has the potential to serve enterprise customers.

Viggle's rapid rise in popularity can be attributed to the advantages of its product design and the viral spread through TikTok. The success of Viggle offers valuable insights for those looking to create competitive advantages in the AI-powered entertainment product space.

AI + Entertainment: A New Approach in a Familiar Field

According to its official description, Viggle is an AI animation creation tool where users can upload a photo and a video of someone dancing, then click to generate a new video that replaces the face in the original video with the face from the photo, while retaining the dance moves.

This is a very straightforward product concept. For example, you could upload a dance video of Cyndi Wang and replace her face with that of a butter bear, resulting in a video of the bear dancing.

Actually, similar features are quite basic in this field, and Boogie AI had already implemented such functionality before. However, Viggle offers substantial upgrades on top of these basic features.

Firstly, users can not only upload their favorite dance videos, but they can also use a variety of action templates provided by Viggle. There are dozens of these templates, with styles ranging from dance to soccer, basketball, Japanese anime, movie scenes, video games, and classic comedy acts, among others.

So, if you upload an image of Mickey Mouse’s head and choose one of Viggle's recommended action templates, you can make Mickey sing and dance, play basketball or soccer, perform boxing moves, and more.

The variety of templates significantly influences user engagement—the more diverse the templates, the more likely users are to stay engaged, discovering new combinations and ways to play with Viggle.

Secondly, regarding background choices, users can either use the original background of the video or select a green or white background. This allows the generated animation to be further edited using other video editing software, creating even more entertaining effects.

In addition to single-person face swaps, Viggle also supports multi-person face swaps.

However, the multi-person face swap feature currently only supports the use of official templates. Users can choose one of the 12 available multi-person dance video templates, then upload several photos and replace the faces in the selected video template with those from the photos.

This feature is also quite interesting. We noticed that the official video templates can support up to three people dancing simultaneously. This means that users can replace the faces of all three characters in the template. If playing with friends, these multi-person templates can be incredibly fun and highly entertaining.

AI face-swapping in animations is not a new concept, but Viggle shows clear innovation compared to previous similar products.

Viggle offers more templates than its predecessors, and these templates cover a wide range of scenarios, providing users with a fresh and engaging experience.

Viggle's AI face-swapping technology is highly refined; after uploading a video or picture, the desired face-swapped video can be generated in just a few seconds, indicating a high level of technological maturity.

Supporting user-uploaded videos is another major breakthrough. After all, template options are limited, but entertainment is limitless. Users' creativity and imagination are infinite, and as a tool, Viggle does well to support users with its features. It’s important to give users ample opportunity to explore their creative ideas.

However, it seems that Viggle’s ambitions don’t stop there.

"We are focused on building what we call a controllable video generation model," Viggle founder Chu Hang said during a media interview. According to Chu, Viggle primarily caters to two types of users—one group uses it to create memes, while others use Viggle as a tool for game design and visual effects production.

Chu Hang explained, "Animation engineers can take some concept designs and quickly turn them into rough animated products using Viggle." He believes that by using Viggle, animation engineers can reduce the time spent on completing sketches, simplify the workflow, and improve the efficiency of sketch completion.

Understanding the market and users is a key impression that Viggle has left on the industry. Chu Hang, a Chinese entrepreneur, has greatly benefited from his previous work experience in founding Viggle.

Chu Hang graduated from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, earned his master’s degree at Cornell University, and completed his Ph.D. in computer vision at the University of Toronto. His subsequent work experience spans companies like Facebook, Google, and Volkswagen.

With extensive technical knowledge and work experience in the industry, Chu Hang's background has been a significant factor in the initial success of Viggle.

Compared to many similar products, Viggle stands out in terms of both product design and technical robustness, which has laid a solid foundation for attracting users.

However, in today’s environment, for a general entertainment product to gain attention, having technological and product advantages alone is not enough. Viggle needs to adopt more professional strategies to break through in its marketing channels and in connecting with users."

Winning the Hearts of Millions in a Short Time: Deconstructing Viggle AI Rapid Rise to Fame

In March of this year, Viggle's Discord had a few thousand members. By mid-May, the number of members had reached 1.8 million, and by the end of May, Viggle’s server membership had surpassed 3 million.

With millions of users captivated, Viggle achieved remarkable popularity in its early stages. The reasons behind this success are worth examining, particularly the advantages in its marketing and product design.

1) Combining Early Hype with Ongoing Promotion

Before Viggle officially launched, there was a process for users to apply for access. During this time, some KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders) who received early access uploaded their creations, drawing significant attention and generating excitement among potential users.

For a product that relies on social media platforms to reach a broad consumer audience, this kind of early hype is essential.

In its promotional efforts, Viggle tapped into a core emotional trigger for users on social platforms—fun. The most frequent comment found in the comment sections of popular Viggle-related videos is "interesting," with many users eager to learn how such engaging videos were made. The explosive special effects in these videos strongly appealed to users, sparking their curiosity and desire to try it out themselves. For developers, this kind of viral spread through social channels is the best way to boost product visibility.

TikTok has been one of the most important channels for Viggle's promotion.

Unlike other products that focus heavily on KOL-driven marketing, Viggle’s promotion on TikTok has seen support not only from KOLs but also from many everyday users. This has created a powerful grassroots effect, significantly amplifying Viggle’s reach.

On TikTok, there are over 40,000 videos under the hashtag #Viggle, and over 33,000 videos under #viggleai.

Pedrodlhm, a KOL with 70,000 followers, is one of Viggle’s users. A 9-second video she made using Viggle received 830,000 likes, with many fans commenting and asking for a tutorial.

A TikTok user named Geirill, who has only 6,030 followers, received 416,000 likes on his videos, with one Viggle AI video alone earning 314,000 likes.

Another user, macymoree, with just 6,055 followers, has a total of 88,000 likes on her videos, with a single viral video about Viggle contributing 85,000 of those likes.

The promotion by both KOLs and everyday users has provided Viggle with significant traffic. People enjoy watching these types of videos and are eager to use Viggle to create new ones, participating in the entertainment-sharing trend. This has led to a secondary wave of promotion, further amplifying Viggle’s reach and creating a viral spread.

2) Rough Quality: An Advantage or a Disadvantage?

The videos generated by Viggle have sparked some interesting reflections.

Whether it’s the official videos released by Viggle, or those shared by KOLs and everyday users, they all share a common trait: the generated videos are of relatively rough quality.

For example, in a video of a woman playing soccer, when she kicks the ball, her face becomes blurry, her facial features scatter, and her limbs appear distorted during movement, with her feet and legs seemingly disconnected. The entire video looks as if it was filmed with a low-quality, outdated phone.

However, this doesn’t diminish users' love and enthusiasm for Viggle. Most fan comments focus on keywords like "fun" and "I want to try it," rather than criticizing the video quality. In fact, the rough texture of the videos seems to enhance their humorous and quirky nature. Higher-quality videos don’t necessarily deliver a stronger comedic effect.

This reminds us of the recent trend of clay-style photos that went viral both domestically and internationally. When using a clay-style filter, the resulting images are charmingly awkward, which users found endearing. From a purely technical standpoint, these clay-style images are not high-quality—they’re rough and somewhat rustic—but the emotions they evoke align with the fun and whimsical desires of today’s youth.

Viggle’s video generation seems to follow a similar path, embracing the "ugly-cute" and quirky style, and it’s clear that this approach has been successful.

At its core, products with a rough quality like this don’t succeed by offering polished, high-definition visuals. Instead, they resonate with users' emotions. Viggle understands well that the primary purpose of making these videos is for humor, so the video quality is designed to complement and enhance that humorous intent.

Conversely, if the videos were made too polished, it might undermine the lighthearted atmosphere, and Viggle might not have garnered such widespread popularity.

The success Viggle has achieved highlights that for AI-powered entertainment products to truly succeed, having a solid foundational technology is essential, but understanding user interests during the product’s promotion is even more critical. The key is for the product to be in sync with user needs.