This article first appeared in Digital Edge, The Edge Malaysia Weekly on April 24, 2023 - April 30, 2023

“It looks like me, it sounds like me, but it’s not me.” This was arguably the quote of the year in Malaysia in 2008 when everyone took an interest in the art of communication. But in the case of an artificial intelligence (AI) avatar, make no mistake; it will look exactly like you, sound exactly like you and can be your digital twin version to help you with daily tasks.

Before the Industrial Revolution, people worked 16 hours daily, and the concept of a “working day” did not exist. Today, with the help of new technologies and production methods, humanity is witnessing unprecedented economic growth, societal change and greater emphasis on people’s well-being. The average number of daily work hours is eight, people have a better work-life balance and businesses can achieve better returns on investment (ROIs).

With AI joining the workforce, people are now experiencing how AI technologies such as ChatGPT and DALL-E can even help free up the time we spend on digital tasks, allowing us to focus on more creative and high-value activities to improve overall productivity and quality of life.

This naturally leads to the next question: What if we all have an AI avatar, a digital clone of ourselves?

An AI avatar is a digital representation of human-like intelligence. This means AI avatars can understand and respond to human conversations and gestures, recognise faces and emotions, and provide personalised and context-aware interactions with people.

Creating an AI avatar that can act like you involves understanding your personality, behaviour, mannerisms and personality traits. Once this data is collected, the AI avatar can be trained using AI algorithms to recognise patterns in your behaviour and respond to different situations the way you would react. As your avatar interacts with you more, its ability to act as you will improve over time.

The technology behind an AI avatar includes natural language processing (NLP) to understand human speech and text, speech recognition technology to convert human speech into digital data, computer vision technology to interpret the environment it sees, machine learning technology to build AI algorithms, generative adversarial networks (GANs) to create digital representations, chatbots to simulate conversation, and virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) to create immersive environments for the avatars to interact with each other.

Imagine your company’s version of its own ChatGPT, with the face and voice of Beyonce on top of it. You get the idea. Customer experiences will be enhanced tremendously. Sales will increase. The business can operate 24/7, and the AI avatar can be replicated in different roles. The AI avatar can also proactively reach customers and interact with them to provide product recommendations based on their behaviour, preferences and purchase history.

For businesses that want to leverage AI avatars to gain a competitive advantage in the market, you should note that when ChatGPT took the world by storm, the market saw an increase in demand for ChatGPT-like customised chatbots tailored to the company’s direction. This is because even after integrating ChatGPT into existing systems, businesses still need a team of data scientists and developers skilled in NLP to train and fine-tune the model with the company’s products, culture and brand image.

In addition, AI avatars will help businesses collect and analyse customer behaviour data, identify improvement areas, save on labour costs, reduce human errors, automate routine tasks and free up employees to focus on high-level tasks.

As for how AI avatars will disrupt the industry, let me use the TikTok influencers’ example I discussed in my previous article on “AI is coming at humanity fast and furious” (Digital Edge, Issue 1459, Feb 13). With the help of generative AI technologies to automate content creation and market research, influencers can now transform into full-fledged advertising firms without hiring anyone.

To take this a few steps further, the influencers can create AI avatars of themselves and license them to brands as virtual marketers, virtual consultants or even virtual customer support. This AI avatar licensing approach will surely create a new business model for the industry.

Now that you could have a digital clone of yourself, what would you do with it?

Some argue that relying heavily on AI avatars for assistance and companionship rather than seeking out other humans could lead to changes in relationships and social dynamics, as they cannot fully replace human interaction and connection.

For people who are isolated or lonely, relying solely on an AI avatar for social interaction could worsen feelings of loneliness and isolation, and they may lose some of their ability to make decisions independently.

Others comment that AI avatars could support people with mental health issues, such as anxiety or depression, by providing calming conversations and helpful resources. It can offer personalised recommendations for movies, music or books, based on individual preferences and past behaviour. They could also be used to play games or engage in other leisure activities. On top of that, the AI avatar could be trained to monitor your health and provide reminders to take medication, schedule doctor’s appointments or perform other tasks related to your health and well-being.

Previously, the Industrial Revolution helped automate many manual jobs. Then people shifted focus to digitalisation to improve productivity.

With the AI revolution, many digital tasks will now also be automated. When the AI avatar takes place in the foreseeable future, what humans will do when given all the free time in the world remains an exciting topic.

What is clear, however, is that AI avatars will undoubtedly have the potential to change how we interact with technology and each other.

David Lim is founder and CEO of WISE AI, a leading enterprise AI solutions company in Southeast Asia

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