GPU company Nvidia wants a piece of that metaverse pie. In its latest project, the company announced its upcoming Nvidia Metaverse will be giving chatbots like Alexa and Siri realistic lifelike avatars.
The move might sound unnerving to some. After all, the virtual world may end up being little more than a visit to the uncanny valley. However, this new goal could lead to us changing how we interact with bots while in the metaverse.
Chatbots will have human forms in Nvidia metaverse
Last Tuesday, Nvidia revealed that they would be making metaverse avatars for chatbots via the Avatar Cloud Engine, a tool for building speaking 3D humans. Rev Lebaredian, Nvidia's vice president of simulation technology, said this was a necessary move to make the metaverse as realistic as possible, while also ensuring that we’ll interact with other people.
“These robots are … necessary for us as we create virtual worlds that become indistinguishable from the real one," Lebaredia said during a media briefing (via CNET).
Apparently, these avatars are close to passing tests by Nvidia, meaning that humans won’t be able to tell the difference between these bots and real people. While interesting in concept, it might be unnerving to see bots with lifelike avatars and the fear of them getting hacked by people with bad intentions is always there.
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Avatars in the metaverse
Since avatars are expected to be a major part of the metaverse, having lifelike ones for chatbots might just be a way to get us accustomed to this online platform. There’s also hope that humans will be able to use the same Nvidia technology to make realistic avatars one day since most of the ones we’ve seen are pretty cartoony.
"Avatars will populate virtual worlds to help us create and build things, to be the brand ambassador and customer service agent, help you find something on a website, take your order at a drive-through, or recommend a retirement or insurance plan," said Chief Executive Jensen Huang.
Nvidia has a lot riding on this technology and the company is hoping that it will be a hit. There’s no denying that people might want realistic avatars when the metaverse becomes mainstream but that remains to be seen.