
Soul Machines - nayyad
https://www.soulmachines.com
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whatshisface
> _The World’s First Autonomously Animated Digital Influencer_

Influencers are people who plug products on their Instagram/YouTube/Twitter
pages. They're the TV pitchmen of this century. Now that real humans are no
longer required for this task, we can say we've finally reached a point where
the archetypal "soulless corporate automation" can be an actual soulless
corporate automation.

~~~
TeMPOraL
Add automated buyers responding to automated influencers by purchasing goods
and services from automated sellers, and we might end up bootstrapping an
economy that doesn't need _any_ humans, running in a loop until it eats
everything and/or breaks down.

 _I broke my back lifting Moloch to Heaven, and all I got was this lousy
Disneyland with no children._

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jasode
The demonstration videos on Soul Machine's website (and also on youtube) show
the level of realism is closer to artificial video games (compare to Unreal
Engine 4 demo[1]) rather than the advanced and almost-undetectable "deep
fakes".

But it doesn't matter that the fake digital personas are not "perfect" and has
an "uncanny valley" look to them.

There's various research[2] that says that avatars with "eye contact" or "eye
gaze" helps some children learn better. It seems plausible that avatars can
also affect mood of customer service interactions or advertising.

If one looks at their technology page[3], it's like taking the Unreal Engine
for synthesizing facial expressions combined with A.I. for understanding
speech and responding in natural language. I.e. It's like adding a _realtime
digital face with emotional affectations_ to Apple Siri or Amazon Alexa.

[1] deep link:
[https://youtu.be/Vh9msqaoJZw?t=194](https://youtu.be/Vh9msqaoJZw?t=194)

[2]
[https://www.google.com/search?q=avatars+virtual+teacher+lear...](https://www.google.com/search?q=avatars+virtual+teacher+learning+comprehension+"eye+contact")

[3]
[https://www.soulmachines.com/technology/](https://www.soulmachines.com/technology/)

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spookybones
I was hoping for a masterful reveal in the video, in which the staff
discussing soul machines are revealed at the end to be 2nd-gen soul machines.

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mst
<title>Cannes Festival Home Page - Soul Machines</title>

Is this performance art or did somebody just screw up the title tag?

~~~
extra88
What's wrong with the page title? It has other references to them presenting/
participating in the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity which
took place in June.

[https://www.canneslions.com](https://www.canneslions.com)

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sgt101
no papers, no patents, pure bullshit.

my guess is that the plan is to hang on and hope that technology will appear
that they can use, and that money will appear to allow them to dominate.

they better have very deep pockets, and a lot of patience.

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Kanhoji
The "I am not a robot" reCaptcha is an interesting flavour on the email list.

~~~
HillaryBriss
I want to see the soul machines should stage a "google style" protest walkout
over that kind of blatant discrimination.

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Lowkeyloki
This reminds me of those attempts to "record" people's consciousnesses by
feeding all their digital communications into neural nets. But this is somehow
even worse.

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blueboo
This reads like the placeholder template text for a landing page sold on
Envato.

Credulous VCs deserve the ride they’re being taken on

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Applejinx
Stay in touch (I'm not a robot)

