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Genies has announced AI avatars for celebrities, adding personalized interactions and adaptive learning features to Genies avatars.
In recent years, Genies has attracted a large list of celebrities and cultural figures as users of its animated avatars for digital performances.
And now, Genies has given celebrities the ability to train their intelligent avatars so they can use these AI representations of themselves on Genies’ upcoming social avatar network, due to launch this fall. These AI avatars will engage users in fully personalized conversations, interactions and gaming experiences, Genies CEO Akash Nigam said in an interview with GamesBeat.
“What has made us famous over the last few years is definitely our celebrity adoption,” Nigam said. “Genies provides avatars for celebrities to monetize life-defining moments.”
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Genies recently unveiled its developer kit, which allows college developers to create their own minigames. These mini-games will be interoperable via Genies’ ML avatar framework, forming a cohesive social network. With Genies 3.0, celebrities have the ability to integrate their avatars into these mini-games, enhancing the automated and personalized gaming experience for each user.
Minigames for a social network of geniuses
He said that after completing its big round last year, the company decided to launch a developer kit that would allow third-party developers, typically students and young developers, to create their own minigames.
“All of these mini-games will be compatible with each other and form a large avatar social network,” Nigam said. “That will make its debut later this year. What we’ve been doing now with our developers is bringing AI into their avatars so they can experience personalized and interactive gameplay with those fans and consumers on the avatars’ social network.”
You could jump into a game and a creator like Shawn Mendes could publish an avatar in the game. Then the player could interact with Mendes and even unlock some new gameplay elements in conversation.
“In this case, the entire social network is built around unlockable gameplay based on how you interact with each component,” Nigam said. “If you can have these new mini-games — casual games developed by their own peers — and they can participate in them, and then ultimately strengthen strong relationships by being able to play with them too. We think that’s very interesting. We think that forms a very interesting social network.”
Nigam said that the games will not be triple-A games, but that third-party developers will develop them for the social network.
“We have worked with thousands and thousands of different cultural icons and taste makers. We are now bringing these avatars to life with personality,” said Nigam. “Genies 1.0 were our 2D avatars in 2019. In 2021 we announced our Genies 2.0, 3D avatars great for AR and VR, and here is announced Genie 3.0, the brains of Genies. That means all of our celebrities and all of our creators are now brought to life by AI. And each of them has a personality, and that correlates with the unlockable gameplay.”
Nigam said the company’s avatars are thriving on platforms like Snapchat, TikTok and Instagram. However, they haven’t had a huge impact on games, where other technologies like Epic’s MetaHumans and Ready Player Me avatars are available.
“This social network will be launched on the Genies platform. So we’re going to be a publisher in many ways,” Nigam said.
Jake Becker, director of creators at Genies, said in a statement, “We’ve invested in our ML avatar framework over the past year to automate avatar interoperability and personality, marking the most significant evolution of our avatars to date.” Genies 3.0 represents the next phase in our avatar technology journey and introduces AI-intelligent avatars.”
The brain system behind the AI avatars is geared towards enhancing the relationship between creator and fan while addressing real issues creators face in terms of scaling their personality, time and effort.
Fans now have engaging renditions of their favorite icons at their fingertips, enabling fully personalized two-way communication and relationship building. Genies’ ML avatar framework allows developers to extend their personality to existing communities and reach new audiences.
Based on the principle of empowering individuals to create their own avatar experiences, Genies is hugely popular with celebrities and influencers. The company recently launched its consumer division, the AR Developer Kit, which allows developers to create interoperable avatar experiences for mobile and hardware AR.
The first avatar experience, Silver Studio, allows users to create and share digital fashion. Genies has secured $250 million in funding from investors including Silver Lake, BOND, NEA and Bob Iger, valuing the company at $1 billion.
fill a gap
Genies is building its own social network for its AI-based Genies avatars.
Given Twitter’s weakness, there is a gap in social media, Nigam said.
“We want to be able to control the culture of the platform from start to finish,” he said. “If we can build our social network from the ground up, we feel like we can make more authentic and meaningful connections in those around us.”
The Silver Studio app is all about sharing fashion among like-minded people. Most of this audience is women. Generative AI can help generate new fashion looks.
Genies has about 100 employees and thousands of Genies avatars have been created by celebrities so far. The company has been quiet lately as it has focused on building internal projects rather than communicating externally, Nigam said.
“It’s been a great year, but now we’re ready to speak to the press again,” he said.
In autumn, the big theme will be the social network of geniuses.
“Our character framework is really at the core of the entire company. “The character brain with avatar framework is what drives our social network,” he said. “What is unique about the Avatar framework is that it makes it really easy for people to navigate through Avatar systems and content without having to do custom rigging, custom animations and custom retargeting every time because we use machine learning to do it Say all kinds of styles ahead.”
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