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Utilising AI-Generated Characters for Education

As it becomes easier to create hyper-realistic digital characters using Artificial Intelligence (AI), much of the conversation around these tools could be misleading. But the technology can also be used for positive purposes – to revive Albert Einstein to teach a physics class, talk through a career change with older self, or anonymise people while preserving facial communication.

To encourage the technology’s positive possibilities, MIT Media Lab researchers and their collaborators at the University of California at Santa Barbara and Osaka University have compiled an open-source, easy-to-use character generation pipeline that combines AI models for facial gestures, voice, and motion and can be used to create a variety of audio and video outputs.

The pipeline also marks the resulting output with a traceable, as well as human-readable, watermark to distinguish it from authentic video content and to show how it was generated — an addition to help prevent its malicious use.

By making this pipeline easily available, the researchers hope to inspire teachers, students, and healthcare workers to explore how such tools can help them in their respective fields. If more students, educators, healthcare workers, and therapists have a chance to build and use these characters, the results could improve health and well-being and contribute to personalised education.

It will be a strange world indeed when AIs and humans begin to share identities. This study does an incredible job of thought leadership, mapping out the space of what is possible with AI-generated characters in domains ranging from education to health to close relationships while giving a tangible roadmap on how to avoid the ethical challenges around privacy and misrepresentation.

– Jeremy Bailenson, Founding Director, Stanford Virtual Human Interaction Lab

Generative adversarial networks, or GANs, a combination of two neural networks that compete against each other, have made it easier to create photorealistic images, clone voices, and animate faces. One researcher first explored its possibilities in a project called Machinoia, where he generated multiple alternative representations of himself — as a child, as an old man, as female — to have a self-dialogue of life choices from different perspectives. The unusual deep-faking experience made him aware of his “journey as a person,”.

Self-exploration is only one of the positive applications of AI-generated characters, the researchers say. Experiments show, for instance, that these characters can make students more enthusiastic about learning and improve cognitive task performance. The technology offers a way for instruction to be “personalised to people’s interest, their idols, their context, and can be changed over time.

Other applications might include characters who help deliver therapy, to alleviate a growing shortage of mental health professionals and reach the estimated 44% of Americans with mental health issues who never receive counselling or AI-generated content that delivers exposure therapy to people with social anxiety. In a related use case, the technology can be used to anonymise faces in the video while preserving facial expressions and emotions, which may be useful for sessions where people want to share personal sensitive information such as health and trauma experiences, or for whistleblowers and witness accounts.

The researchers note that any of the applications of AI-generated characters raise legal and ethical issues that must be discussed as the technology evolves. One of the goals with this research is to raise awareness about what is possible, ask questions and start public conversations about how this technology can be used ethically for societal benefit.

U.S researchers have been adopting AI for several purposes, such as monitoring biodiversity. As reported by OpenGov Asia, the researchers are deploying autonomous recording equipment in natural areas to eavesdrop on the animals. This project aims to help answer important scientific questions, such as which species are present and how their abundance changes over time.

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Qlik’s vision is a data-literate world, where everyone can use data and analytics to improve decision-making and solve their most challenging problems. A private company, Qlik offers real-time data integration and analytics solutions, powered by Qlik Cloud, to close the gaps between data, insights and action. By transforming data into Active Intelligence, businesses can drive better decisions, improve revenue and profitability, and optimize customer relationships. Qlik serves more than 38,000 active customers in over 100 countries.

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CTC Global Singapore, a premier end-to-end IT solutions provider, is a fully owned subsidiary of ITOCHU Techno-Solutions Corporation (CTC) and ITOCHU Corporation.

Since 1972, CTC has established itself as one of the country’s top IT solutions providers. With 50 years of experience, headed by an experienced management team and staffed by over 200 qualified IT professionals, we support organizations with integrated IT solutions expertise in Autonomous IT, Cyber Security, Digital Transformation, Enterprise Cloud Infrastructure, Workplace Modernization and Professional Services.

Well-known for our strengths in system integration and consultation, CTC Global proves to be the preferred IT outsourcing destination for organizations all over Singapore today.

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Planview has one mission: to build the future of connected work. Our solutions enable organizations to connect the business from ideas to impact, empowering companies to accelerate the achievement of what matters most. Planview’s full spectrum of Portfolio Management and Work Management solutions creates an organizational focus on the strategic outcomes that matter and empowers teams to deliver their best work, no matter how they work. The comprehensive Planview platform and enterprise success model enables customers to deliver innovative, competitive products, services, and customer experiences. Headquartered in Austin, Texas, with locations around the world, Planview has more than 1,300 employees supporting 4,500 customers and 2.6 million users worldwide. For more information, visit www.planview.com.

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SIRIM is a premier industrial research and technology organisation in Malaysia, wholly-owned by the Minister​ of Finance Incorporated. With over forty years of experience and expertise, SIRIM is mandated as the machinery for research and technology development, and the national champion of quality. SIRIM has always played a major role in the development of the country’s private sector. By tapping into our expertise and knowledge base, we focus on developing new technologies and improvements in the manufacturing, technology and services sectors. We nurture Small Medium Enterprises (SME) growth with solutions for technology penetration and upgrading, making it an ideal technology partner for SMEs.

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HashiCorp provides infrastructure automation software for multi-cloud environments, enabling enterprises to unlock a common cloud operating model to provision, secure, connect, and run any application on any infrastructure. HashiCorp tools allow organizations to deliver applications faster by helping enterprises transition from manual processes and ITIL practices to self-service automation and DevOps practices. 

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IBM is a leading global hybrid cloud and AI, and business services provider. We help clients in more than 175 countries capitalize on insights from their data, streamline business processes, reduce costs and gain the competitive edge in their industries. Nearly 3,000 government and corporate entities in critical infrastructure areas such as financial services, telecommunications and healthcare rely on IBM’s hybrid cloud platform and Red Hat OpenShift to affect their digital transformations quickly, efficiently and securely. IBM’s breakthrough innovations in AI, quantum computing, industry-specific cloud solutions and business services deliver open and flexible options to our clients. All of this is backed by IBM’s legendary commitment to trust, transparency, responsibility, inclusivity and service.

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