BeingAI unveils human-like AI character named Zbee

BeingAI is making virtual beings with artificial intelligence. And its initially AI getting is a virtual character named Zbee.

Zbee can exist on unique platforms and so can interact with individuals anytime, anyplace, to bring humanness and gamification into digital experiences. Zbee will come with an engaging character and individual stories. He or she will give friendship, entertainment, and mentorship, just like in the film Her which starred Joaquin Phoenix.

Hong Kong-based BeingAI is the brainchild of founders Jeanne Lim (CEO), Lee Chapman (president), and Amit Kumar Pandey (chief technologies officer). Zbee can autonomously interact with individuals in genuine time across devices and media platforms, as element of an engaging narrative practical experience. Most importantly, Zbee has human-defined values that steer toward positive behavior.

The business is a confluence of their combined interests, skilled practical experience, and shared goal. They hope that AI beings as a category will inspire, engage, and help a generation of young individuals. Most of all, they hope humans and AI can understand from and complement
each and every other in a positive way.

Lim mentioned she desires Zbee to bring collectively AI and transmedia storytelling to build individual spaces exactly where individuals can interact with her in genuine time. Zbee is developed to behave with human values and empathy. This coming week, BeingAI will show off Zbee at a licensing expo in Las Vegas to discover possible partnerships with some brands.

“We want Zbee to have value and relevance in human society, so Zbee has her own story with friends, jobs, goals, trials and tribulations.” mentioned Lim.

Born from Hanson Robotics

Lim began the business in the fall of last year. She was inspired whilst working for David Hanson, founder of Hanson Robotics. She joined as chief advertising officer and got to see the evolution of Sophia as an AI robot.

“He was working on creating conscious robots, or conscious AI,” Lim mentioned. “It showed me that there’s a huge opportunity for a robot that is designed in the right way to be able to connect with people and gain trust from people.”

Hanson developed a physical robot named Sophia as a human-like artificial getting. Lim became more interested in virtual characters, and she wanted to figure out how to take the AI characters to a new level by way of the digital world. Unlike Sophia, Zbee is “device-less.”

In founding BeingAI, she hired some Hanson Robotics individuals and licensed tech from the business to develop AI beings that have been virtual characters. While robotics nevertheless has to resolve some mechanical challenges, Lim believes it is time to move forward with virtual characters.

“I saw that, with a virtual character, you can really scale the character to millions of people, instead of having a robot talk to hundreds of people in person,” Lim mentioned.

Zbee the virtual character

And that is what led to Zbee. There are a assortment of other characters getting developed, all of them with diverse backgrounds. Lim is contemplating the unique strategies to use Zbee, such as making an animated series. But she exists as a proof of idea on a mobile app, exactly where she interacts as a 3D character and can chit-chat with individuals.

“We have characters and stories,” Lim mentioned. “People are asking us if they can plug their characters into our platform. But we are still working on the platform.”

The business is also working on an augmented reality version exactly where you can interact with Zbee in the genuine world by viewing her with AR glasses. She can do items like lead you by way of a guided meditation. Eventually, Lim would like her to be a character in the  metaverse, the universe of virtual worlds that are all interconnected, like in novels such as Snow Crash and Ready Player One.

In the meantime, they can provide her with brains by means of GPT-3, the AI platform developed by the Open AI Foundation.

“We’re trying to make a convergence between gamification and interaction fiction,” Lim mentioned. “We can nurture her as an AI. We believe there’s a huge opportunity for AI beings to learn with us, to develop things like critical thinking, where you could basically converse with her and learn how to ask questions. We think you can do things like self-care, how to take care of your mental wellness.”

Lim mentioned the business will work collectively with content partners who can use Zbee as a sort of user interface for finding out courses.

Avatars and companions

Overall, Lim desires the AI beings to have their personal personalities and function as companions, rather than just be servants to humans.

“A lot of avatar companies are looking at either customer service agents or a personal avatar of the user,” Lim mentioned. “There’s a lot of value in back, but we’re just looking at it from a different angle.”

The business has raised a tiny quantity of cash so far, but it is not saying who its investor is however. It has about 11 individuals who are each complete time or element time.

“We see AI beings as a user interface. So it’s the next generation user interface,” Lim mentioned. “The way we design the system is agnostic to the device. And it’s actually agnostic to the character. We could swap out different characters. So we actually can animate them within a framework, so that it’s easy for us to swap in and out different characters. Our idea is to go where the customer is, whether they are using a mobile phone or a computer or an Oculus or a car.”

Lim is not speaking a great deal about the metaverse however, but ultimately, that is exactly where the business desires to go.

Originally appeared on: TheSpuzz