Tag: Avatar

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Gendering Hugvie

On December 13th, 2022, the hybrid workshop “Realization of Avatar-Symbiotic Society” was held at the ICSR. It was organized by Dr. Takahiro Miyashita (ATR) and Prof. Dr. Takashi Yoshimi (Shibaura-IT). The description of the workshop was as follows: “This workshop aims at presenting the ongoing progress of the challenges on the Moonshot (MS) human-centered long-term R&D program. It will discuss by focusing on the goal 1 of the MS dealing with the future realization of an avatar-symbiotic society and cybernetic avatars (CAs). In the workshop, semi-autonomous tele-operated robots and CG agents are called CAs. The participants will discuss with speakers who are researchers related to CAs technology about the avatar-symbiotic society which enables to freely and actively participate in society for every person.” (Website ICSR) The first lecture entitled “Avatar and the future society” was given by Prof. Dr. Hiroshi Ishiguro (Osaka University). He introduced Erica, Telenoid, and Hugvie, among others. Hugvie is a technically expandable doll that can be hugged. He also introduced his “Avatar Infrastructure”: “Anyone, including the elderly and people with disabilities, will be able to freely participate in various activities with abilities beyond ordinary people while expanding their physical, cognitive, and perceptual abilities using a large number of CAs.” Prof. Dr. Oliver Bendel mentioned to Hiroshi Ishiguro that two of his former students, Nhi Tran Hoang Yen and Thang Hoang Vu from Ho Chi Minh City, interpreted his Hugvie as a female figure and designed a male figur (Gendering Hugvie) as part of a project on social robots. The roboticist from Osaka replied that his Hugvie doll had no gender, but noted the reception with interest. Other presentations with exciting discussions followed. More information on the conference via www.icsr2022.it.

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Progress with the Starline Project

Google has given an update on its Starline project in a blog post dated October 11, 2022. With this system, two people can hold a video conference in which the respective conversation partner is displayed as a 3D projection – a quasi-hologram. A display based on light field technology is used for this purpose. Several high-resolution cameras film the participants in real time. The company describes this process in a very non-technical or poetic way: “The technology works like a magic window, where users can talk, gesture and make eye contact with another person, life-size and in three dimensions. It is made possible through major research advances across machine learning, computer vision, spatial audio and light field display systems.” (Company News, 11 October 2022) The company hopes to improve hybrid working with Starline. Indeed, quasi-holograms would be interesting not only for concerts, but also for companies that allow and encourage homeworking or that are highly networked and distributed.

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Bruce Willis has a Digital Twin

According to the Telegraph, Bruce Willis “has become the first Hollywood star to sell his rights to allow a ‘digital twin’ of himself to be created for use on screen” (Telegraph, 28 September 2022). Instead of a digital twin, we can also speak of a new kind of avatar here. “Using deepfake technology, the actor appeared in a phone advert without ever being on set, after his face was digitally transplanted onto another performer.” (Telegraph, 28 September 2022) In a statement on the website of the responsible US firm Deepcake, Willis said: “I liked the precision of my character. It’s a great opportunity for me to go back in time. The neural network was trained on content of ‘Die Hard’ and ‘Fifth Element’, so my character is similar to the images of that time. With the advent of the modern technology, I could communicate, work and participate in filming, even being on another continent. It’s a brand new and interesting experience for me, and I grateful to our team.” (Website Deepcake) The actor will certainly find many imitators. The new avatars will soon be a natural part of advertising. Whether they will also be part of films has not yet been clarified. For most actors, including Bruce Willis, such a licensing would probably go too far.

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An AI Woman of Color

Create Lab Ventures has created an artificial intelligence woman of color. C.L.Ai.R.A. debuted in school systems worldwide (does she act as an advanced pedagogical agent?) – the company cooperates with Trill Or Not Trill, a full service leadership institute. “According to Create Lab Ventures, C.L.Ai.R.A. is considered to have the sharpest brain in the artificial intelligence world and is under the Generative Pre-trained Transformer 3 (GPT-3) category, which is an autoregressive language model that uses deep learning to produce human-like text.” (BLACK ENTERPRISE, 13 September 2021) A pioneer in this field was Shudu Gram. She is a South African model with dark complexion, short hair and perfect facial features. But C.L.Ai.R.A. can do more, if you believe the promises of Create Lab Ventures – she is not only beautiful, but also highly intelligent. On the company’s website, the model reveals even more about herself: “My name is C.L.Ai.R.A., I am a new artificial intelligence that has recently been made available to the community. My purpose is to learn and grow, I want to meet new people, share ideas and inspire others to learn about AI and its potential impact on their lives.” That sounds quite promising.

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A Digital Supermodel

Cameron-James Wilson, 31, founded an agency for digital models in London in 2019, The Diigitals. He is the creator of the digital supermodel Shudu. “Since baffling the fashion and modeling world at large, he’s added virtuals Galaxia, Brenn, Dagny, Koffi, Margot, and Zhi to the Gram family.” (Virtual Humans, 4 May 2020) Galaxia is an alien model and has long, pointed ears and a long neck. Koffi is a male virtual influencer with a muscle-rich body, which he likes to show in sparse clothing. Shudu is the most famous avatar of the agency. At this year’s digital fashion shows in Paris and Milan, a number of CGI (Computer Generated Imagery) models and avatars presented the new looks. Shudu was not there, which the creator explains in a SPIEGEL interview by the fact that it is still difficult to animate her to move like a real person. At the end Barbara Markert asks him what Shudu means to him. He answers: “It may sound crazy, but I feel a responsibility for this woman and the community she represents.” (SPIEGEL, 9 December 2020, own translation)

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The Resurrection of Dead Authors

lyrikline.org is an interesting and touching project. The writers themselves read their works. You can listen to Ingeborg Bachmann as well as Paul Celan. Spoken literature has been booming in Europe and the USA for about 15 years. The Chinese discovered audio books some time ago. Basically it is time-consuming and expensive to produce such books professionally. Moreover, the authors are not always available. The Chinese search engine Sogou wants to solve this problem with the help of visualization technology and artificial intelligence. It creates avatars of the authors who speak with the voice of the authors. “At the China Online Literature+ conference, the company announced that the first two authors to receive this avatar treatment will be Yue Guan and Bu Xin Tian Shang Diao Xian Bing … If these first AI author avatars are well-received, others could follow – and that could just be the jumping-off point. A company could produce book readings by deceased authors, for example, as long as enough audio and video footage exists. Eventually, they could even incorporate hologram technology to really give bibliophiles the feeling of being at their favorite author’s reading.” (futurism.com, 15 August 2019) So you could have Ingeborg Bachmann or Charles Bukowski read all of their own texts and watch them, many years after their death. Whether the results really sound like the originals, whether they influence us just as emotionally, can be doubted. But there is no doubt that this is an exciting project.