Conversational AI

Let’s tick one more thing in the list of technologies that jumped out of sci-fi movies. Yes, it is holograms. People who imagined that they will be able to meet up with friends, have face-to-face convocations, attend family get-togethers, etc this year, are still stuck at home waving their hands on video calls. For the past year, Zoom and Facetime users soared up like never before, thanks to the Covid-19 pandemic. Owing to the popularity, more and more innovation and technological influence are continuously taking place in the conversational AI space. As a move further, Google has hinted about unraveling a 3D hologram feature in its conversational AI.

Truly, the pandemic triggered researchers and technologists to thinks out of the box. Especially, due to prolonging lockdowns across the world, the way we interact with people has taken a different shape. According to a survey, around 44% of people believe that Covid-19 has shifted the way we converse with technology. Experts predict that by 2030, we could all be using holograms to stay connected to our nearest and dearest. Conversational AI will take different shapes and one such form is holograms. As video conferencing is seen as the only mode of communication, initially, companies were adding fun stuff to make it interesting. But the recent improvement in conversational AI has opened the door for innovation and a new future. In this article, IndustryWired has listed some of the initiatives that companies and organizations took to streamline hologram in conversational AI.

Google hints about its plan to employ Hologram in chats

Google has recently claimed that its active Android users have now touched 3 billion compared to its rival Apple, which claims 1 billion users. As the company’s conversational AI users raise, Google is planning for another breakthrough initiative. Google Chief Sundar Pichai has provided a sneak-peak into the company’s ongoing program that is in the experimental stage. Project Starline, a trailblazing move is seeking to bring new dimension to video conferencing. The project vows to deliver virtual chat booths, which allow users to convert themselves into life-size 3D hologram versions. In a nutshell, users can feel the 3D presence of the person they are conversing with virtually.

Project Starline is not a new move. For many years, Google has been working on unraveling futuristic solutions in its conversational AI platform. But the concept only got materialized during the pandemic. Using high-resolution cameras, microphones, and custom-build depth sensors, the mechanism captures users' shape and appearance from multiple perspectives and then fuses them together to create an extremely detailed, real-time 3D model. Currently, Google is testing the innovative project at their offices. The company also assured that the results are promising.

A phone-booth sized machine to streamline holograms

PORTL, a technology company based in Los Angeles has created a phone booth-sized machine that can beam AI-powered holograms straight into one's living room. The machine is a futuristic form of conversational AI that would allow users to talk in real-time with a life-sized hologram of another person. Besides, PORTL also gave a digital twist by allowing users to talk with recorded holograms of historical figures or deceased relatives.

Queen’s University’s video chat hologram 

Queen’s University brought to reality a Start Trek-like holographic video conferencing system for the first time in 2018. The institutions created a hologram system for video-chatting, which allows people in different locations to appear before one another in 3D life-size forms. This was one of the first projects that did not need a headset or 3D glasses to see hologram images. The display projects a light field with many images, one from every degree of angle.