One of the favorite parts of modern video games, for many people, is designing their avatars. I’ve been thinking about this because I’m looking for AI to create an area I call “synthetic social media.” But so far I haven’t seen any companies in this space. Since it doesn’t exist, I don’t know exactly what shape it will take but let me try to explain what I mean.
In Japan, there is a synthetic pop star. In many immersive video games, like Second Life, people use them as a way to escape and be someone else in a virtual world. I think AI will allow us to combine these two ideas and create “friends” who act the way we want and do the things we wish they would do.
Imagine a platform that allows anyone to create a virtual pop star. You design your avatar, give it a name, and then AI can write the music. You could say you want it to be 40% Rolling Stones, 10% Taylor Swift, 20% Beastie Boys and 30% random other mix, and the AI can write a song that sounds like that blend. Now the avatar can perform concerts or shows for your friends, singing the songs it wrote. The most popular songs and concerts (and thus avatars) develop followings. And it isn’t just in music. This could work for art or video content – anything digitally created by humans that AI could step in and perform reasonably well at.
Now it gives you the chance to be friends with, or be the manager for, this synthetic AI start on a social media platform that will be mostly synthetic identities. If you aren’t talented enough to sign and play music, your avatar can. You can live vicariously through it, and many people will. Longer term, you could see the idea expanding into sports, and even into the workplace to some extent through synthetic ai workers. It’s out there but, it feels like a logical extension of where AI is going, and the time is right to set the seeds in motion for phase 1 of such an industry.
If you are building something along these lines, please reach out as I’d love to invest.