Virtual Humans
Virtual humans are becoming increasingly useful as the technology that creates and supports them advances. Businesses across nearly all industries are finding creative ways to implement and benefit from them. Like other types of AI-based developments, it appears that virtual humans will play an ever-greater role in both our professional and personal lives.
What Are Virtual Humans?
AI virtual humans are digitally created, interactive representations of people. Because they are meant to be practically indistinguishable from people, they can be considered a human digital twin. Virtual humans are designed to produce human behavior when a “stimulus” is applied to them (see below).
Although various proprietary technologies are used to create virtual humans, many are based on the following systems:
- Human AI generator programs that create the interactive image of a person
- Generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) that processes queries and formulates a response
- Natural language processing (NLP) that receives prompts from the user and translates them to queries
- Proprietary source information (for example, a database), or Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) that uses large language models to access up-to-date and relevant data from an expanded range of sources
To illustrate this, one of the most popular applications of virtual humans is customer service. A customer service virtual human “listens” to the client through NLP, “thinks” about an answer by referencing a database or RAG information, and “answers” using Gen AI.
A similar concept involves avatars, which can function just as virtual humans do within the framework of their application. However, not every avatar looks like a person; one of the most common uses for avatars is as cartoon characters.
Virtual Humans vs. Digital Humans
Some sources distinguish between virtual and digital humans. They argue that virtual human software creates a lifelike image of a person while the behavior of the image (if it is a dynamic representation) occurs through animation. In comparison, the behavior of digital humans is controlled by AI. However, for the sake of simplicity, digital and virtual humans can be considered as one and the same.
Types of Virtual Humans
We can expect a larger number of types of virtual humans as the associated technology improves. Currently, Harvard Business Review has classified four types. Each differs according to how often a person would use them and whether the interaction type would rely heavily on RAG or proprietary data.
- Companions
The majority of applications in this category are socially oriented. Virtual companions help to keep an older person company, or serve as a type of friend or romantic interest. One can imagine this application as being in constant use and applying advanced forms of conversational AI. Companions also use RAG extensively because of the range of responses that might be demanded from them.
- Assistants
AI-powered virtual assistants are meant to interact frequently with people while carrying out a defined task. Examples include therapists (mental health, physiotherapy), secretaries (scheduling, reminders, and information lookup), and coaches (workplace and personal).
- Agents
This is currently the main market for advanced digital humans. Virtual agents are used for marketing, sales, customer service, learning and development, and to replicate human behavior (e.g. for healthcare training). Proprietary data is essential for these types of applications in order to deliver fast and accurate responses.
- Influencers
Instead of investing in expensive influencer content featuring an actual person, some brands are turning to virtual humans. Virtual influencers are based on sophisticated customization technologies and can build personal connections with fans. In addition to presenting products, virtual influencers discuss their “personal” history and social issues.
Applications of Virtual Humans
From medical applications to movies, virtual humans can be found in a wide number of industries and engage in an extensive range of tasks. Here are a few popular examples of how they are being used today:
Learning and Development
Traditional learning and development courses that use situational learning techniques benefit from virtual humans, which can be programmed to:
- Give instruction
- Pose questions and give answers to which the trainee must respond
- Respond in real-time to the trainee’s actions
- Behave in certain ways to assess how the student handles the situation
Common industries for these applications include healthcare, military/police training, and education.
Design and Evaluation
In this case, the physical qualities of the virtual human are its most essential aspect, as it closely mimics those of humans. For example, this type of virtual human is used for ergonomics, clothing design, analysis of injuries and medical treatments, and testing of safety features.
Customer-Facing Operations
To some extent, businesses can replace employees with virtual humans that will interact with customers. This is an alternative to chatbots, voice response, and other forms of interaction that do not feature a human face–a factor shown to be important for engagement.
Entertainment/Information
In addition to virtual companions as an entertainment medium, virtual humans are used extensively in computer games to replace actors through special effects techniques and even as characters in interactive dramas. They can also provide information and services at entertainment sites instead of the typical information desk.
Benefits of Virtual Humans
As the use of virtual humans becomes more widespread, a greater range of businesses will discover its main advantage: return on investment. Virtual humans can be trained and “put to work” for a fraction of the cost of a person. They do not receive a salary or take days off and provide a consistent level of service. Even though the quality of interaction depends on how advanced the programming and troubleshooting processes are, advances in technology promise continual improvement.
Similarly, virtual humans are highly scalable. AI human generation programs can create an infinite number of physical appearances combined with proprietary source information that can be constantly updated. Virtual humans are also the only alternative in applications for medical experimentation and dangerous or hazardous settings, such as testing car safety.
Finally, virtual humans are more interesting to interact with than non-human alternatives. Instead of text, images, or a voice-only response, people can interact with dynamic, lifelike images that only get more realistic over time.
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