[On Zoom, users can replace their camera’s image with a customizable cartoon avatar that blinks and moves subtly even when the user steps away, but Lenovo has announced an AI-generated photorealistic video avatar that can actually convince other people they’re seeing you in front of your turned-on camera during a video conference, even when you’ve left the room. And a newly announced Lenovo AI-based assistant sounds like it’ll be capable of evoking compelling medium-as-social-actor presence as users communicate with their computer. Some of the details about both developments are in the Forbes story below. The new tools are part of a larger effort to develop “AI for All”; see Lenovo’s press release, “AI-Powered Avatar Creates New Communication Possibilities for People with Severe Disabilities” for a meaningful example. –Matthew]
Lenovo’s AI Pretends To Be You In Video Meetings
By Barry Collins, Senior Contributor
January 8, 2024
Need to duck out of a video meeting to answer the door or a call of nature? A new AI service being developed by Lenovo will soon cover for your absence.
The prototype AI puts a video avatar of yourself on screen as soon as you step away from your laptop. To be clear, this isn’t a cartoon-like animated avatar, but a lifelike video representation of yourself that other people on the call would be hard pressed to tell apart from the real you.
Your video avatar isn’t just a still image. It continues to make small head and body movements, making it hugely convincing… unless you’re called upon to speak in the meeting, of course. There’s a limit to how far Lenovo’s prepared to cover for your absence, at least for the time being.
I saw a live demonstration of the AI avatar at Lenovo’s CES 2024 press briefing in Las Vegas, and it’s very convincing.
In the first photo here, you can see Lenovo’s representative in front of the laptop, on a video call:
[Image: Lenovo’s staff member is at the laptop on a video call. Credit: Barry Collins]
And here you can see how, even though he’s stepped right away from the laptop and out of the webcam’s view, the AI puts a convincing avatar of him in his place:
[Image: He still appears to be on the call, even though he’s stepped away. Barry Collins]
Lenovo’s AI PC Plans
The video avatar is just a small part of Lenovo’s plans to bring its own AI to laptops and PCs.
The AI will include a device assistant that can answer questions and manipulate features of that particular device, unlike Microsoft’s more generic Windows Copilot AI.
For example, you could ask the AI how much memory the device has or how much free storage remains. You can also ask the AI to put the machine in different modes, such as battery-saving mode or reading mode, without having to know where those features live in the Windows settings menus.
Lenovo’s AI will also include a “work assistant” that can summarize documents stored on the device and scan the contents of local files to answer even quite complex queries, such as “show me the PowerPoint slides” on a particular project. It won’t just open the relevant presentation, but provide openable thumbnails of the relevant slides.
The key difference between Lenovo’s AI and the Microsoft version built into Windows is that Lenovo’s AI will perform many of its functions locally, rather than in the cloud, meaning you can use the AI tools even when you don’t have an internet connection.
Lenovo is working with an unnamed Chinese partner on developing the AI features, and the AI will first be rolled out in that country, with no announced plans for a U.S. launch yet.