Create Digital Humans in minutes, Soul Machines unveils Digital DNA platform
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Avatars that resemble real people, in their behaviours and speech, are on the rise, and some people are using them to create immortal versions of themselves. Soul Machines, the company behind some of the world’s most human-like digital avatars that are already in service...
Futurist Keynote, London: Investing in the Exponential Future, SRP European Conference
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Incredibly powerful, and increasingly democratised, emerging technologies are transforming every sector faster than ever, and this can have dire consequences for investors if the mechanisms behind the change are not understood. Firstly, thank you to Amelie for inviting me to be the keynote for...
Death isn’t forever, companies build digital avatars so people can “live on after death”
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Digital Avatars will mean that physical human death is simply a doorway into a new digital reality where our descendants interact with our Avatars instead of the real, physical us. Over the past couple of years, asides from the giant strides we’ve seen in...
World’s first full body 3D scanner produces amazing live images of the human body
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Medical scanners haven’t advanced much in decades, this new scanner is faster, higher resolution and produces insights into the human body not possible using today’s technology. Recently I talked about a new innovation that lets doctors create movies of the behaviour of cells in...
China debuts the world’s first AI news anchor
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As it gets easier to create high quality, natural sounding “human-like” avatars we’ll see more emerge and take on new and varied roles. Over the past couple of years there’s been a huge increase in the amount of press columns devoted to the topic...
World’s first digital teacher starts work teaching kids about energy
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF AI, avatars and bots will play an increasingly central role in the future of education, and Will is the first teacher of his kind. It’s back to school time for millions of children around the world and you know what that means – it’s...
Soul Machines reveal the secrets behind BabyX, their life like artificial baby
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Over time we will all be interacting more and more with AI, as a result companies are trying to “humanise” it. BabyX, the virtual, artificially intelligent creation of Mark Sagar and his company, Soul Machines, who also bought us Ava, a life-like digital avatar that’s...
CGI “Virtual influencers” on Instagram battle it out in public, snag real ad cash
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Today we are used to the majority of our influencers, and contacts, being human, but as we progress into the future more of the encounters we have will be with virtual entities, in the form of avatars, bots and virtual vloggers like these. It...
Nvidia unveil Isaac, a virtual simulator to help companies create advanced robots
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF As the world comes to rely more and more on bots and robots we need better, and faster, ways to train them. A newly expanded simulator system could be our high-speed ticket to building fully autonomous bots and robots, or so says Nvidia’s CEO....
Google’s lifelike sounding AI assistant, Duplex, blows past uncanny valley
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF I’ve been saying this for a long time, very soon you won’t know whether the content you’re consuming was generated by a human or a machine, and Google’s latest product, Duplex, moves us all one step closer to that time. At Google’s I/O developer...
Daimler hires Soul Machine’s lifelike Avatar to answer customer queries
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Bots are evolving and increasingly it’s going to get more difficult to tell bots from real people, whether they’re just text bots or, in this case, life like looking avatars. New Zealand based company Soul Machines, the company behind a sophisticated high definition digital...
Baidu’s AI can clone anyone’s voice in under a minute
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Being able to clone people’s voices, and mimic them, opens up a range of well meaning opportunities, but it also paves the way for fake news chaos and everything in between… In the near future, just as it is today, fake news will become...
British bank trials a life like digital Avatar to serve customers better
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Avatars and bots are getting more intelligent, and more capable, and while they are being increasingly deployed to help organisations improve customer service, there’s a very real toll on human jobs. This week the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), who recently started using brain...
Chinese researchers have created an IQ test for AI
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Humans have an inane desire to measure and categorise things, and this includes being able to measure an AI’s level of intelligence, but it’s proving to be a difficult problem to solve. Human intelligence is hard enough to measure, and over the decades today’s...
This new test will tell us if AI has become self-aware and gained consciousness
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF The proof that we are turning science fiction into science fact every day is all around us, so we should conclude that one day AI will become conscious and self-aware, and now we can test for it. A few weeks ago Facebook unveiled their...
Nike unveils its futuristic running track
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Anything that makes exercise more entertaining and engaging has to be applauded, and nike’s latest innovation is a great example of fun and function. Nike has constructed a pop-up arena track in the middle of Manila that it’s calling the “world’s first LED running track,” that has...
Soldiers digital twins let US Army 3D print replacement body parts in battle
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Thousands of soldiers are injured in battle every year, now the US Army is scanning, digitising and creating digital twins of its soldiers that will let field medics 3D print new body parts in the field that could save their lives. The US military...
Point. Click. Create your own 3D avatar and put yourself in the game
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Avatars will play an increasingly important role in the future – whether they’re being used to depict, or replace actors in movies, VR simulations or to compliment bots, Loom.ai’s new product makes the process of creating one simple. We’re entering a new world of,...
Researchers create human VR avatars with three arms to improve productivity
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Many people forget that virtual reality is just that – virtual, as a result it’s often easy to forget that the rules of the real world don’t have to apply in the virtual one. Researchers at Stanford University think that having a third arm...
Virtual reality plays its role in convicting Nazi SS guards who killed millions
WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF Criminal convictions, particularly involving historic crimes, are often made or broken on just how well jurors can visualise the scenes of the crimes using second hand evidence, now VR can give them a first person view. Earlier this month I reported that UK and...
- 1
- 2
