New Tech Lets Users Create Their Own Avatars

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A new artificial intelligence technology allows users to create their own virtual avatars, for a wide array of uses, including military training. The technology combines speech, computer vision, natural language processing and machine learning technologies to build the Personal AI (PAI) that leverage the continuous flow of new information on the blockchain-based network. By perpetually retraining the neural networks to adjust to new and ever-changing visual, acoustic, language, and behavioral cues, your PAI becomes smarter and more productive with every interaction.

The process is easy. The user can simply download a free app, take a selfie and speak a sentence or two into the smartphone. That information is used to create a digital copy, or what the company, ObEN, calls its Personal AI, that looks and sounds just like the user. Over time, it even begins to act like you.

While video games have long been at the forefront of virtual reality, the technology is already being used in the fields of gaming, architecture, education and military training, among others. The devices offer high quality displays that provide a wide field of view and the ability to track users’ head movements to create high levels of immersion.

Skip Rizzo, director of medical virtual reality for USC’s Institute for Creative Technologies, said: “We can also put service members with post-traumatic stress disorder into a simulated kind of context in which they were traumatized before to help them better cope with how they handle that.”

The company says they are moving into the world of retail and healthcare. The virtual person will tell the users where to go in the mall to find the exact type of jacket they’re looking for. On the medical side, the app will allow users to be connected to virtual nurses and physicians who can offer basic advice based on the symptoms presented to them.

VR is also useful when preparing for job interviews, creating different characters who are the interviewers, according to pasadenastarnews.com.