You are looking at a robot. Yes, a robot. Though she may seem human, it is a robot named Mica, an initiative by Magic Leap One to create Augmented Reality possible. The company created the AI assistant to provide users’ needs like scan the user wearing the VR’s mood and preferences and perform the task he might find interesting.
Upcoming startups and business firms are starting to use AI as a source of interacting with customers and provide the services they need. The combination of intelligent technology and human emotions is the key. The AI interacting with you will read and interpret your expressions and associated emotions in order to give an accurate response just as equal to a human. These AI can be called Avatar or digital humans.
Funny as it may sound, the relevance of digital humans is increasing exponentially. Earlier this month, Soul Machines raised $40 million in a Series B round after being featured in a YouTube Originals documentary and counting Procter & Gamble and The Royal Bank of Scotland among its clients. Also, companies like Samsung are planning to implement their own digital assistant known as Neon and another company called Uneeq that has a client list including BMW and Vodafone.
So, what do these AIs have, that humans don’t? Well, the basic reason to create a human-like avatar is to provide “human touch” to enhance performance. Though it might seem like the link between AI and human could be hindered with artificial appearance, customers have rated good experience with digital humans. The development of avatars is to makes it easier to connect to customers and attend their concerns than hiring so many working humans whose emotional performance can change which may cause limitations. However, the lower wage is not the main focus of the companies but to create a better experience. Let’s take a simple example of AI- Alexa. Your assistant that follows your instruction and improves its nature from each command provided. It also has the feature to recognize languages (not all but few) are a wonder itself. Now let’s imagine this assistance in a human form that is your digital avatar at your service.
The wonders of digital humans are indefinite, one of the major cons is the fact that the interaction to a bot claiming to provide “human touch” is ridiculous when there is little or no human element at all. It could serve to some as an insult to be interacting with a bot that is subjected to its own technical errors while giving complaints.
