philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

ABBA’s Virtual Concert, The Metaverse And The Future Of Entertainment

The quartet spent five weeks with A/V wizards at Industrial Light and Magic, who have used advanced motion capture techniques to create virtual copies of the band that behave accurately in every way, from their dancing to their eye movements. Artificial intelligence (AI) routines were then used to “de-age” the performers, similarly to how it has been done in movies such as Star Wars and Martin Scorsese’s The Irishman.  

The digital Abba performance – named Abba Voyage – will take place at a physical location in London, with the audience buying tickets to the show and taking their place in the audience just as if they were going to see the group perform in their 1970s heyday. But other performers have experimented with making their shows entirely digital. Boy band BTS attracted a world-record 1.33 million paying viewers to a live-streamed concert earlier this year. Then, Ariana Grande took the logical next step of closing the loop between a digital show in front of a live audience and a live show in front of a digital audience. During a performance in which she used the video game Fortnite as a venue, both the star herself and the audience were present as digital avatars.

While we know AI will be used to recreate a young-looking Abba, we can speculate that the next step could potentially go even further by recreating something of their personalities and behavior. It isn’t a huge leap to imagine they could use language processing and voice recognition to respond to song requests from the audience and, perhaps one day, even hold a conversation.

See the full story here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/bernardmarr/2021/09/06/abbas-virtual-concert-the-metaverse-and-the-future-of-entertainment/?sh=24f980d06844