NVIDIA created a toy replica of its CEO to demo its new AI avatars

NVIDIA has been steadily advancing its AI assistant technology in recent months, and now it’s clear just how all the pieces fit together. The company has introduced Omniverse Avatar (for 3D assistant creation) and Riva (custom AI voice creation) platforms that, combined, lead to surprisingly realistic virtual personas with relatively little effort — or, in one case, deliberately unrealistic.

In one demo, used to highlight NVIDIA’s AI-powered Maxine toolkit, the company created an Omniverse Avatar from a woman’s photo and used Riva to train the voice based on that woman, convert text to speech and translate to different languages. The digital stand-in looks and sounds much like the real person (aside from a couple of stiff-sounding translations), and can even turn its head while maintaining natural-looking eye contact. As you might imagine, this could lead to more relatable virtual helpers at kiosks and websites.

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