Introduction

My name is Richard Bowdler. I work at a company called Truliance. We build interactive avatars.

So this next 10, 15 minutes is going to be really good fun. And let me tell you why.

Because before coming here today, I was under the impression that I was giving a theoretical talk about avatars. And then I had an email from Josh a little bit earlier on this morning saying, demos.

Let's see demos. So we're going to pray to the demo gods that... We're going to play with some avatars.

We're going to interact with some avatars and see what happens. So that's number one why this next 10, 15 minutes is going to be fun.

And also, because I've prepared 43 slides in a, like, Pecha Kucha, whap through them. So I spent this afternoon frantically deleting slides and what have you. I was also sat at the front going, actually, screw that. Let's add some slides back in.

Why Avatars?

So avatars, why avatars, and what's interesting about that? So we can interact with artificial intelligence, with language models.

Everyone's pretty familiar with that, through text prompts, through speech prompts, obviously Alexa, Siri, and also now ChatGPT and OpenAI. Has anybody not used ChatGPT? Let's just start with that.

Has anybody not used the audio version of ChatGPT, where you speak to it? OK, interesting.

Oh, yeah. Oh, hello. Now, I mean, yeah, I use ChatGPT all the time, like text input and audio input as well.

In fact, my wife has joked that I am developing a relationship with ChatGPT more so than I have. 1Yeah. Anyway, that's a different talk. So...

And why this is interesting is because there are a number of applications where actually having a visual modality, so either a human-like form or a kind of character-like form, is actually valuable and people want to have that. And we're kind of at the start of that era, the start of that space with AI.

So they're interactive avatars or digital humans. They go by a number of different names.

Importance of Interactive Avatars

But before we get into playing with some of these and having a look, I want to tell you and show you a bit about why it matters. Why do we care about this?

And based on the name of the title, Scaling the Global Workforce, This is by Manpower Group, I think it's American, looking at labor shortages globally over the last 10 years. And this is reports from business owners saying, are we lacking, are they lacking labor and staff?

And obviously, you can see the trend. Ultimately, whilst we have a, and this is, I'm going to show you one of the slides that I snuck back in, whilst we do have a growing population, we have a growing aging population, and we need to figure out a way to combat that, to get around that. And one of those ways, I believe, is through the use of interactive avatars.

You might have seen this type of diagram before. They're called population pyramids, sort of candlestick-type diagrams, and it's really interesting to look at.

This is UK data. I'll show you an image of how global data has trended over time.

You can see that, yes, people are getting older, and they are not dying, and that's not a bad thing, but we need to... LAUGHTER We need to do something about that, because there aren't enough people for the people.

I say that because my granny is weirdly old, and I tell everybody I meet, she's 107, and she, whoa, but it's like, and people are like, it's amazing. It's like, it's sort of, but she wants to die, but that's, anyway. Again, they're not really the point of this talk.

So let's look at the global data.

It's, yeah, so over the last, sorry, over 60 years and over, 2015, this is projection from Global Age Watch Index. And you can see basically where it's sort of redder than there are more people, like 25%, 30%, over the age of 60.

There's a trend, right? People, like, aging population.

So, whoop. Was I going to talk about this yet? Yes.

Before we jump into the demos, I want to talk about this again. More slides that I snuck back in.

That counts as a slap. No.

Current Trends and Technological Advances

So we think quite deeply about this at Truliance. I look at the markets. I think about this quite a lot. It's sort of what I do.

There are companies that are building super photorealistic stuff. Has anybody seen Reid AI online? Reid Hoffman is founder of LinkedIn, cloning himself. And it looks creepily real.

The second layer that we want to kind of slice in is latency. That is, and you will all have experienced this if you've interacted with the audio version of a chat GPT, is this is more of a kind of conversion rate optimization kind of frame, and that is, There's an acceptance threshold for a conversation to feel okay.

Like, is it slow? Is it too slow? Is it too fast? There is actually a sweet spot.

So humans respond. When you speak to someone, we take about 500 milliseconds to form and then start speaking when you're having a conversation. So faster response than that feels a bit weird. Slower than about 700 milliseconds, there's kind of quite a weird sweet spot. So latency is really key.

And this is one of the core focuses of what we do. And we have a partnership with OpenAI. We're running a hackathon next week, which I'm going to get onto in a second. There's something for everybody at the end of this that I'd like to invite you to. Not just hijacking your event, Josh, but throwing it out there as something that is of value to people here.

And so OpenAI have released something that is called their Real-Time API. At the moment, when you speak to AI and it speaks back to you, what happens is you speak and then it transforms speech into text. Text interacts with text through a language model, and then the output of text gets transformed back from text to speech. And it's quite a long way round of going about things. The real-time API that OpenAI have released just last month 1is voice to voice. It's above my technical pay grade to describe exactly how it works, but it's key for driving to creating voice and visual products that have real human feeling of latency.

So that's the second point.

And the third point is cost and scalability. The costs of language models are what they are. We don't play in that space.

We sit on top of any language model, whether it's OpenAI or any of the others, you name it. You can plug those into our avatars.

There are people, of them trillions, who are building in the space that we're in.

What's different about what we do to anyone else is that the avatars that you're about to see, this is the end of slides, so it's avatars next, praise be to the gods of demos, is that we render our avatars in the browser. I, yes, let's hope the Wi-Fi's good. Other companies render their avatars in the cloud, so on a server.

So without further ado, let's play with some robots. OK. OK. And then I've got an invitation for you. So... Okay.

Demonstration and Invitation

So this took... 1We have a whole host of avatars that are off the shelf. You can go to truliance.com, log in. It's free. Sign up for an account. There's like off-the-shelf avatars that you can just say, yeah, I'll go with that one. And then hook it up to your OpenAI account and off you go.

Hello. How can I assist you today? If you have any health concerns or questions, feel free to let me know.

Hi there. I've got a bit of a sore throat. I was wondering if you could tell me what I should do.

I'm sorry to hear that you have a sore throat. How long have you had it? And do you have any other symptoms, like a fever or cough? This information will help determine the best course of action.

Yes, I've had a sore throat for about a week, but no fever. Feels okay. Since your sore throat has persisted for a week without a fever, it's a good idea to consult a GP.

Thanks. You're welcome. If you have any more questions or need further assistance, feel free to ask. Take care and hope you feel better soon.

Yeah. All right. And we plumbed the avatar with all of the product data from this e-commerce website. So let's see if we can have a play around with you.

Where are you, Annie? I've got to put Sandbox Annie. No, it's this one. Okay, let's chat.

Here we go. Hi there. How can I help you today?

Oh, hi. I'm looking to get some treats for my Labrador. He's a puppy. What would you suggest?

We've got some fantastic treats for your pup. Check out the three-pack, Superfood Dog Treats with Koji. They're made with delicious, healthy ingredients, and come in peanut butter, strawberry, and beet, and banana and cinnamon flavors for just $30 per pack. Would you like to give them a try and treat your furry friend?

Oh, yes, please. Could you tell me, who are you? Could you tell me who are you?

I'm Annie, your friendly sales assistant. Oh, cool. I'm a Samoyed dog who loves helping with healthy- Oh, interrupted.

Turn taking is inherently tricky. I'm going to mute you and me. Figuring like getting the turn taking component is technically tricky. I don't have to do it.

Conclusion

Final thing before we go is just to say if anybody wants to build with avatars, then take your phone out and open that QR code. And it will go through to my LinkedIn profile.

And it will be doing what's happening on the phone on the right. Scroll down. There's a post that is about an event that we're running next week.

It's a hackathon all day with OpenAI. Like the post. If you comment MindStone, then we'll take note of that and feedback to Joshua.

If you also take a photo of me up here and post it in the comment, then I will make sure that at least one of you gets invited. So at least somebody here... will be welcomed into the hackathon.

There's drinks and stuff after that. If you post with a photo of me speaking up here in the comments, then I will make sure that you get invited to the after event drinks.

That's it. There's a bribe. It's cheap. There we go.

Thank you very much for your attention, and that's it.