AI-Generated Characters Are Here, They’re Just Not Evenly Distributed
Sarah Guisto from Aww Inc took the audience through a fast-paced tour of virtual characters that her studio in Tokyo has successfully built and deployed. Perhaps the most famous is Imma, who is now three years old and most well-known for performing at the Tokyo Paralympics closing ceremony. Aww is the leading Asian company in virtual humans combining not just advanced technology but an empathetic approach to design, crafting these beings in a way that not just renders them technical, but also credible and emotional.
As Asia’s number one influential virtual human with over 1 million followers on Instagram and Tik Tok, Imma has ‘worked with’ brands such as Porsche, Dior, and Nike, regularly appearing on the covers of magazines, and one can see the appeal for brands. These characters are flexible, adaptable, and global. They don’t demand repeat fees in media and they probably turn up on the dot and are never late for a shoot. But the foremost reason is that they can become whoever you want them to be. ...
As Jeanne Lim, CEO of Being AI suggested,... Lim wants to build trust between humans and these virtual beings. What are the required elements to achieve that? According to Lim, it’s a combination of an engaging and consistent personality, a sense of morality and empathy to avoid causing harm, a way to perceive a user’s emotions (by detecting when people are sad or happy through facial expressions as well as through conversation), each being having a specific skill set, and an interoperable approach for real-time interactivity so these beings are not trapped in an app only to be used on certain platforms or in certain spaces. ...
Professor Jeremy Bailenson of Stanford University ... in virtual reality (VR), tracking and rendering are used, so the only thing that travels over the network is tracking data rather than any visual information about the world.
The people you see within your VR headset have been redrawn using that tracking information. ...
Finally, one theme that came up more than once was how deep fakes could help us to anonymize ourselves. For example, if we had an app where we could choose a different face and a new tone of voice, before being connected to a counselor in group therapy, we could speak about our emotional situation without giving away our identity. ...
See the full story here: https://www.forbes.com/sites/traceyfollows/2022/04/15/ai-generated-characters-are-here-theyre-just-not-evenly-distributed/?sh=5dd387716b31
