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**4by4 Announces Contract for Advanced AI Virtual Human ‘Lucy’**
Visual tech solution company 4 by 4, led by CEO Yoon Jun-ho, has announced a contract with Lotte Home Shopping for a project to realize AI-based virtual humans. This contract aims to further refine and naturalize ‘Lucy’, a virtual human that 4 by 4 has been creating and operating with Lotte Home Shopping since 2021.
Lucy is currently being implemented by learning tens of thousands of data through deep learning AI and then intricately synthesizing it into computer graphics. She is one of the virtual humans conducting live commerce broadcasts in real-time, continually communicating with fans.
The contract focuses on the development of solutions for natural voice and face expressions that align with speech for a “100% automated Lucy”. The project is managed by 4 by 4’s Pixel Business Division, which has developed its video quality enhancement AI solution ‘Pixel’.
Once the voice solution for Lucy is completed, it will be possible to make Lucy speak by entering text (TTS, Text to Speech) and to change real-time speech into Lucy’s voice (Real-time STS, Speech to Speech). This will not only maintain Lucy’s voice identity in any situation but also free it from risks such as band model changes.
Furthermore, the project will soon be extended to implement ‘body movements’ without a band model. By pre-capturing many of Lucy’s movements with motion capture and allowing AI to learn these movements, it will be programmable to take suitable actions in any situation. This approach will allow the creation of virtual human content in real-time and in large quantities without additional filming, leading to more efficient content planning and production.
The ultimate goal of this virtual human realization project is to equip a Conversational Virtual Human with a chatbot GPT-based dialogue engine. 4 by 4 expects that once Lucy is upgraded to this level, we will be able to meet a virtual human in the true sense of the word – one that can “generate and converse on its own”.
CEO Yoon Jun-ho said, “The era of virtual humans attracting attention merely due to their ‘novelty’ is over. To prove their value in the industry, each virtual human needs to create unique content.”
https://zdnet.co.kr/view/?no=20230706090400
https://zdnet.co.kr/view/?no=20230706090400