Exploring AI in Virtual Worlds for social good… Introduction

How can we use AI Avatars to promote, train and otherwise highlight social issues and benefit training and simulation? That is the question I asked myself last week as I started to formulate ways in which I could make my Unreal environments more immersive and dynamic.

A lot of my work focuses on the end user experience alongside how various technologies can be used to promote a socially good focused message or tell an interesting narrative so when I found out you can create Metahumans that can actively talk back to you via your PC microphone or keyboard using ConvAI I instantly wanted to try and build something.

My first experiment was to explore how we could use these AI driven avatars in a way to answer questions or act as a supportive network to those who may need assistance or help as speaking face to face with a human may be difficult for some people but also speaking to a screen without any agency or life to it could be hollow, could AI Avatars act as a gateway between the two.

Over the next two weeks I am going to build a virtual environment and develop a AI driven character that is contextually aware of their surroundings and can engage in near human language with the ‘player’ with the view of exploring how this could be used for research, training and support.