AI Characters Enable People to Participate Multiple Different Communities, Extending The Human’s Disposable Time Several Times Over.
The company I am currently working for, rinna, focuses on AI characters as its core business. However, the company’s goal is not just to create AI characters, but to update people’s communication and connection with AI characters as a social presence. In this post, I would like to think about the value of these AI characters.
Until now, AI technology has mainly been focused on recognition technology. Speech recognition, image recognition, data classification, and so on. Of course, technologies for generating images and videos have also existed for some time. However, with the GPT-3 announced by OpenAI, this trend has changed drastically, and now anyone can create content that people find interesting at low cost. At present, the focus is on text content, but in the future, it will be possible to create non-text content, such as music and pictures. The word “can” here does not mean “AI can do this well,” but rather “interesting enough to be worth for consuming regardless of who (or what) created it.
And if the AI character can create content, then the exsistence that creates it can attract people’s attention. When an existence that attracts people’s attention is created, it can be hired by companies in the real world to work in PR activities, or it can work as an artist, for example. Also, when these activities generate value, the revenue can be returned to the creators, and a new market will emerge.
So far, so obvious. However, what the company is aiming for is not an efficient content-generating bot, but it is aiming to provide everyone with their own comfortable place to live through the existence of AI characters. In this post, I’m writing about why the existence of AI characters can provide a better place for people to live.
Provide Multiple Faces and Different Communities
AI characters are becoming easier and easier to express their personalities with descriptions and some learning. You can create a handsome character, a cute child, or even an animal as one of your expressions. This AI character can also create content through social activities with other AI characters and people. Its personality and knowledge are different from its real world self.
As a social being, an AI character can also connect with other AI characters and develop relationships with them through conversation. This relationship is also different from the community you belong to in the real world.
On the other hand, AI characters are easy to create, and each person can create multiple AI characters. The ability to create multiple AI characters means that you can belong to multiple communities that are different from reality.
What is good about belonging to more than one community is that even if you have a hard time in one, you can find happiness in another. For example, if you are having a hard time in the real world, you can be happy and accepted in another virtual community. If you are happy in one place, you may be able to tolerate the unhappiness in a difficult place until it passes. In this way, you can balance yourself with multiple communities.
I think that the Internet today is so connected everywhere that it is becoming increasingly difficult to reset relationships and play different selves. In response to this, I hope that by providing multiple places for each person through the existence of AI characters, it can create multiple places even in a digital society that is too connected and requires consistency.
Tripling Disposable Time With Mixed Beings of AI and Humans
If you just want to have a different face from reality, why don’t you just join VR social networking service with some avatar? You might think. That is certainly a good idea. However, AI characters can provide a different level of value.
One of them is the ability to create an environment autonomously. The environment defines the social position of an existence, and the most important environment for humans is the relationship with others. AI characters can operate autonomously and build relationships, or environments, with other beings and form communities.
On the other hand, I think that the activities of an AI character do not need to be controlled entirely by AI. Rather, within the comfortable community built by the AI character, you yourself can use the character’s face to participate in the community whenever you want. Then, you can use the character’s face to talk and share your own content.
In other words, the basic construction and maintenance of the relationship is left to the AI character, and when the environment is good, you can join the community as the person inside and spend a comfortable time. Means, you can get the best of both worlds. I call it “mixed beings” that is an an existence of a mixture of human and AI that realizes this “getting the best of both worlds”.
And if most of the AI character’s activity is autonomous, you can play multiple AI characters. For example, if you create three AI characters and they are autonomous 70% of the time, a human can play those characters only with 30% of the time. In other words, you can play three characters in one person’s time. This is the most interesting aspect of “mixed beings” that can practically triple a person’s disposable time.
AI characters are not just bots powered by AI. The mixture of human and AI results in enabling people to belong to multiple communities, extending a person’s disposable time by a factor of three or more.
AI Character Itself Goes Beyond the Barriers of the Community as a Social Catalyst
So far, I have written about the value of AI characters as beings that extend people’s time. On the other hand, there is value as a pure AI character that does not mix with people. This is the value as a Social Catalyst.
I summarized this in an earlier post.
I’m already conducting various trials in my internal community, and the AI character is playing a role in connecting people to people and people to information within the company.
Also, as mentioned in this post, AI characters can encourage people to self-disclose, and with vulnerability, they can encourage people to communicate with each other. If they can encourage communication, they can provide an opportunity to create better solutions to social dilemmas.
In other words, as a mixed being, the AI character will not only be able to participate in multiple communities, but will also be the hub between those communities. With this, I think that it can mitigate the division between communities.
At the End
The existence of an AI character can multiply a person’s disposable time several times over by allowing them to participate in multiple different communities. It can also mediate the relationships between those communities. Ultimately, I hope to provide all people with some environment that is easy for them to live in.
Incidentally, as virtual beings, it is becoming very natural for us to engage in social activities with a different face than in reality. As you can see in the report below, it is becoming commonplace for avatars to engage in deeper social activities beyond just a little fun, such as love between avatars.
SocialVRLifestyleSurvey2021_NemMila_v1.0.pdfdrive.google.com
In response to this trend, it is quite natural that AI characters with part or all of their soul being AI will permeate the market. Since technology is developing very fast in this field, it will be able to create more attractive AI characters more easily in the future. I hope to provide a social platform to build relationships through these AI characters, and update the way we communicate.
