NVIDIA isn’t new to creating realistic AI avatars, but now it’s making them more practical. The iconic GPU maker has unveiled the Omniverse Avatar Cloud Engine (ACE) toolkit, which makes it easier for companies to incorporate digital humans into chatbots, games, and other apps.
The combination of AI models and services helps developers quickly create virtual humans without relying on massive amounts of the processing power of their own. In other words, a startup can create an avatar as compelling as that of a giant corporation.
Omniverse is used for animation controlled by artificial intelligence. Metropolis solves computer vision problems (e.g., object recognition). Merlin helps with recommendations, and NeMo Megatron and Riva help with natural language models and AI speech, respectively.
It should be a while before you can talk to an ACE-based avatar in a role-playing game or anywhere else. And while NVIDIA claims that its AI is “on a path” to passing the Turing test, at this point, it falls short of that goal. It’s still obvious that you’re talking to a computer. Nevertheless, it may be a nice upgrade over the crude avatars and basic text bots you usually deal with today.
