At yesterday’s in-house development conference L.E.A.P. Magic Leap demonstrated the journalists a deeper insight into the functionality of their Magic Leap One. One of the highlights were the porgs from the new Star Wars movies. In a virtual living room the present reporters could meet C3PO, Chewbacca and the Porgs, which flew and jumped behind the testers. But the really impressive thing was the virtual assistant of the company.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8-oHdR_-l6o
Magic Leap introduces MICA : AI Avatar (Source: Robert McGregor)
Virtual assistants are nothing completely new since Alexa, Google Home and Siri. Google’s improved assistant Duplex will also be rolled out this month, but Magic Leap’s demo presented Mica to the world. Mica is a human-like artificial intelligence that can be seen in the company’s Mixed Reality glasses.
Mica is a short-haired woman who, in contrast to her siblings Alexa and Siri, doesn’t speak, but nevertheless communicates with the audience in a very human-like way.
After various demos, journalists report how Mica smiled at her, reacted to her and sought eye contact. On today’s stage at the Magic Leap L.E.A.P. event, Andrew Rabinovich, head of Artificial Intelligence at Magic Leap, and John Monos, head of the human-centric AI, talked about how they plan to expand digital avatars on the Magic Leap platform in the coming years.
Innovation Profile: Magic Leap Mica
According to the journalists, Mica differs greatly from the previous virtual assistants. It uses previously unknown types of gestures and facial expressions that make it more likeable and accessible.
Due to the AI supported representation, the novelty is to be set realistically high, while the insecurity, since the handling of virtual assistants like Alexa or Siri is learned meanwhile, ehr is to be rated low. At first people might be irritated by the realistic movement of the avatar, which affects the conflict potencial, but in the medium term, this will happen. The application does not work extremely complex, but is strongly dependent on the success of Magic Leap One.
Fazit: The Magic Leap One still has some optimization needs, but applications like Mica show the potential behind the technology. The virtual assistants for Magic Leap One users are to be rolled out by the end of the year. The complete keynotes of the L.E.A.P. Conference can be found here:
Magic Leap L.E.A.P. Conference Keynote (Source: Magic Leap)
Post Picture: Magic Leap
