No one in their sound mind would ever argue with the statement that AI technologies are currently on the rise. Every company wants to create its own chatbot, every company is heavily focusing on how it can improve the neural networks it has already designed, and every company is trying to surmount the erstwhile achievements of its competitors. AI Avatars might just be the shtick you're looking for.
What Is An AI Avatar?
In a recent interview with The Verge, Zoom founder Eric Yuan claimed that the future is around the corner: a few more years, and AI Avatars will be able to attend tedious online meetings, reply to monotonous emails, and, essentially, work for you.
Mr. Yuan’s speculations might not be far from the truth: according to Emergen Research, AI avatars are set to become standard by 2025 due to the advancement of sophisticated digital twins created to authentically replicate humans and, correspondingly, their interactions.
Fundamentally, AI avatars, or digital twins, as they are sometimes called, manifest an individual that can best represent your brand and, therefore, elevate your business techniques. Trained on the data provided by the company itself, they can offer precise assistance, create innovative service offerings, improve customer engagement, and, eventually, boost this company's advertising campaign. Prioritizing data security, AI avatars can protect sensitive information and still sustain user trust, making each interaction relevant and engaging.
Digital twins are known to merge two distinct features common in cyberspace: highly developed chatbot capabilities you have undoubtedly met all over the Internet and artificial intelligence, famous for its growing depth and expressiveness. This combination ensures that virtual ambassadors mirror both the appearance and behavior of real humans. At the same time, they provide intuitively tangible interaction and redefine digital interaction by bridging the gap between virtual assistants and the nuanced realm of human expressions. Unlike chatbots, normally confined to written texts, AI avatars brag a fluid dialogue: they can maintain a conversation and adjust their responses depending on the fashion in which the question is asked. Moreover, digital twins tend to capture non-verbal cues: tone of voice, gestures, and facial expressions become hooks that help the technology interpret emotions they observe and reply accordingly.
What Are Their Characteristics?
Basically, AI avatars, unlike their counterparts, are better at resembling humans, both intelligence- and appearance-wise. Speaking of appearance, actually, digital twins are reported to successfully capture emotions, expressions, and body language, thus creating a sense of familiarity and mitigating the notorious uncanny valley effect. This alone helps users feel a connection as virtual ambassadors tend to encapsulate user inputs, no matter which exactly: speech, gestures, or texts. AI avatars, however, have not yet reached the final stage: they are constantly evolving, learning adaptively from user interactions and feedback that can help them make the interaction more effective and tailored to individual preferences.
Advantages
We have briefly covered the topic of general characteristics pertaining to AI avatars, so now let us speak about their major advantages.
- Customizable. Any AI avatar can be customized and adjusted to the business owner's individual needs, so users can effortlessly create a unique character that best represents their brand.
- Versatile. Digital twins can be used across various platforms, regardless of their format: you can either create video content on social media or use the avatar as a profile pic on your LinkedIn account.
- Interactive. Digital avatars have mastered the feature of gaining real-time facial expressions, which gives users an amplified sensation of familiarity and delivers a more engaging experience.
- Cost-effective. AI avatar generators do not require expensive equipment or profound knowledge of coding. If you can't afford to break the bank, this tool is just for you, and many small business owners can share this opinion.
- Time-efficient. Character creation may take hours or, in some cases, days, but AI twins can be generated in mere seconds.
- Scalable. With the help of generators, users can crank out an endless number of unique avatars from scratch. So, if your employees and customers are in need of digital twins, you can aid them in a moment without running out of options.
Disadvantages
It would be excruciatingly unfair to neglect the other side of the coin, so let us quickly enumerate the fundamental flaws of the technology.
- Limited adaptability. AI avatars are deemed extremely versatile, and it would be wrong to think otherwise. However, they are not at all perfect: digital avatars heavily rely on algorithms and scripts and sometimes face certain limitations. For example, these systems are considerably less agile when complex scenarios where nuanced decision-making, creativity, or empathy are embroiled.
- Misinterpretation. Even the most advanced technology is fallible. In certain cases, AI systems still may struggle to accurately interpret tone of voice or emotional cues.
- Lack of human interaction. This aspect is tightly connected with the previous point: a machine always remains a machine. As a result, it fails to convey genuine empathy whenever needed. It can only mimic a friendly confabulation, but proper emotional understanding is a mystery to the technology.
- Copyright infringement. We will switch to legalese a little later, but at this point, it should just be mentioned that AI systems happen to use copyrighted works of artists in their databases.
Before we go on to the next paragraph, let it be known that the characteristics and disadvantages may vary: consult the policy before using the generator.
Do They Belong In My Niche?
Most likely, yes. Whatever vertical you are dealing with, be it Nutra, e-commerce, or, for example, finance, you can immediately implement this groundbreaking technology into your business.
If you are in the dark as to which way to twist your newly found revelation, we are only happy to provide a few relevant examples.
- In e-commerce, AI avatars successfully generate leads and conduct product demonstrations. You can safely delegate information collection to your digital twin and watch how clients are directed to sales and receive their after-sales support. It might not seem like a big achievement, but these mild touches can enhance customer satisfaction and loyalty.
- In education, digital avatars create a seamless learning experience by helping students navigate the material and guiding them through lessons, supplying each demonstration with a profound explanation.
- Banking and finance relish innovative solutions like no other: they can use AI avatars as customer service agents who present finance-related educational content, answer questions, and assist clients in simple transactions.
- Human resources and recruitment employ digital twins to facilitate the onboarding processes: in this case, AI avatars can serve as virtual coaches and interviewers.
- The gambling niche can consider AI twins as interactive companions that respond to user actions and provide an immersive experience.
- Affiliates working in the Nutra niche may find themselves inclined to use virtual ambassadors as specialists who can deliver a credible story about the magic pill they are promoting.
As AI avatars are capable of conducting complex conversations in the fashion previously reserved for human interactions exclusively, it is possible to expand their influence just a little further. They can become personal advisors on a website, helping customers choose the right product, provide personalized recommendations, or offer real-time support. A regular chatbot can also be upgraded to an interactive website support avatar welcoming visitors on the home page and directing them to the desired section.
What About Legal Concerns?
After reading this profound research containing the crucial bits every business owner should know, you may have decided that this is right up your alley: you can save time and money, scale up your business, and deliver an interactive experience to every customer. While all aforementioned characteristics are true and do not require further confirmation, there’s one little hitch you might want to know about: the system's novelty.
Highly productive but extremely controversial, AI avatars draw a blank in legal regulations: the obsolete legal framework hardly covers the newly developed technologies, and therefore, it cannot be applied to the subject. For the time being, different countries are making attempts at creating a digital code where AI regulations pertain, and there are a few loudest cases that set a precedent and require an immediate change in the legislative system.
One of the most remarkable and recent occasions is a complaint issued by actor Scarlett Johansson. If we get rid of all thorny legalese, the crux of the matter is this: Scarlett Johansson accused OpenAI, a famous AI research company of using a voice that sounded “eerily similar” to hers. It is hard to define whether the company did indeed implement the actor’s voice into the system or cloned it, but even if it did, the process was remarkably simple: modern technologies can recreate audio or video based on just a few minutes of footage.
What's worse, such digital clones are remarkably convincing. Just several years ago it was easy to distinguish a digital copy from a human being, and now people are conducting research raising the question if AI-powered avatars can supplant humans. The results are less than inspiring: more than half of the subjects take the AI for a real person, and another 10 to 15% cannot pinpoint if they see a human being or an avatar.
This, along with Johansson's claim, pushes the world to the thought that we do need new norms, legal protection, and digital tools to prevent abuses and guarantee that individuals have ironclad control over their virtual twins. Thus, if Johansson sues OpenAI, she may provoke a chain reaction and amplify the power of the bipartisan bill that calls to criminalize nonconsensual, sexualized AI-generated images, which would be a decent addition to the bill that cracks down on AI robocalls. Some AI companies also make attempts at contributing to the cause: OpenAI's Sora, for example, plans to feature a watermark at the bottom of each clip and contain metadata to triangulate its creator.
However, the main achievement in the field of lawmaking is the AI Act adopted by the European Parliament on March 13, 2023. Albeit the Act is criticized for leaving place for loopholes for the private sector and security agencies, (partially) legitimizing predictive policing and live public facial recognition, and double standards, it is still generally considered a breakthrough. This Act provides rules on transparency, accountability, human oversight, and data quality, aiming to foster the development of trustworthy and safe AI technologies across the EU.
The main distinctive feature of the law is that it follows a risk-based approach: the higher the risk of harming society, the stricter the rules. For example, if the AI system in question constitutes a limited risk, it is subject to light transparency obligations, whereas the high-risk AI technologies are to face a set of requirements and obligations to enter the EU market.
Wrapping Up
AI Avatars, as AI technologies in general, prove to be an exceptionally productive business solution that can address a variety of challenges any business owner faces on a regular basis. Digital clones are a great, cost-effective and time-effective tool that can benefit your business, but they tend to raise legal concerns. With the new AI Act adopted in the EU and several bills proposed by the U.S. Senate, developers and their clients are entering a new era where their AI-related decisions may be subject to scrutiny. That being said, if you use AI Avatars, use them with caution.
