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Unith has won a contract to roll out AI-based Digital Humans in 14 countries. Wait, what exactly is an “AI-based Digital Human”?
Here’s two recent ASX Announcements that caught our attention:
UNITH wins contract for AI-Based Digital Humans in 14 countries; GPT-enabled Digital Human launched for public demonstration
So we’re taking a closer look at Unith (ASX: UNT) and asking what exactly is an “AI-based Digital Human” and when will we see this public demonstration?
But first, a quick primer on Unith
Unith (who some may remember as Crowd Media prior to their name change in 2022) is an ASX-listed company that has been working on building a conversational AI platform since 2019. They aim to take a step beyond ChatGPT’s text-based AI conversations and create ‘digital humans’ that look and sound like people, allowing us to have conversations with human-like avatars.
Unith’s vision is for their ‘digital humans’ to allow businesses to automate customer service, marketing, sales and education.
To give you a sense of where a ‘digital human’ may be useful – a Big 5 global tech company is using the Digital Human technology to help onboard their employees in one of their flagships divisions in Europe. CEO Idan Schmorak said they have signed their most important deal to date with one of the Big 5 Tech companies (Apple, Amazon, Google, Meta, or Microsoft).
Due to confidentiality reasons, Unith can’t mention which one it is, but it is a major validation for the system and provides Unith with the opportunity to collect a lot of information on how the system is used.
But perhaps the best way to visualise what Unith are trying to build is this video that shows how they are working to create ‘digital doubles’ of historical figures.
What was in Unith’s recent announcement?
The recent announcement shared two key updates:
- Unith has launched its first digital human for public demonstration
- Unith has won a contract to launch digital human social workers in 14 countries
1. Unith’s digital humans are available for public demonstration
Up until now, we’ve seen videos of Unith’s digital humans (like the examples we shared earlier) but we haven’t had the option to chat to them. Unith have now released three digital humans, named AIKO, LAIA, and Julia that are available for the general public to chat to online. AIKO is Unith spokesperson, LAIA is a Barcelona tour guide, and Julia is an HR employee programmed to guide conversations around onboarding.
But here’s little more about AIKO.
AIKO is a representative of Unith and is able to answer questions about the company (which makes us worry that our articles on companies will quickly become redundant…). AIKO is powered by Unith’s Digital Human platform that creates the visual and audio for these ‘digital humans’. Unith has then partnered with OpenAI’s GPT platform to integrate their artificial intelligence. Basically, add ChatGPT’s ability to answer questions with Unith’s ability to create AI-avatars and verbally communicate in more than 60 languages, and you have a digital human.
Rather than describing it, it is really something you need to check out for yourself. Chat with AIKO(Artificial Intelligence Knowledge Operator).
For Unith, AIKO is just the beginning. By the end of 2023 they hope to offer companies of all sizes the ability to create their own AIKO. Companies will be able to set their preferred visual appearance and voice and create their own digital humans.
Unith believe these digital humans will be able to take on business functions such as customer support or sales and, importantly, operate at a scale non-digital humans (aka us) won’t be able to match. Imagine an AI-powered customer service bot that is able to converse with thousands of customers at one time, across multiple devices, and in more than 60 different languages.
Companies will be able to train their digital humans on specific sets of information they choose to upload such as customer service guides, product catalogues, employee handbooks or the business website. So while ChatGPT has been trained on all the public internet and often regurgitates some of the internet’s misinformation, these more specifically trained digital humans will only have learned off a company’s own material.
Put another way, when we here at Equity Mates create EquityMatesBot (or BryceBot – we still haven’t landed on the name) we can choose to train it just by listening to the thousands of podcast episodes we’ve put out over the years. That way, it will know our three key company policies (we hate fees, we hate jargon, we hate paperwork) and our company history (that Bryce continues to beat Ren in stock of the year). What it won’t know is any of the information out there in the public that we haven’t trained it on (for example, that Bryce once performed at the Canberra International Music Festival. Okay, maybe we would train it on that.)
2. Unith will be launching digital human social workers in 14 countries
Building on their developments in digital humans, Unith have won a contact with the Alliance for Public Health to launch digital human social workers in 14 countries.
The Alliance for Public Health is a NGO based in Ukraine that works with key public and private organisations across Eastern Europe to combat epidemics including HIV/AIDS, tuberculosis, and viral hepatitis. One of the key challenges in confronting healthcare epidemics is disseminating information and ensuring people understand the information given and have a place to ask any questions they have. We only need to think back to our experiences with COVID and how much time and effort governments and public health organisations spent disseminating information. The Alliance for Public Health are looking to embrace conversational AI as another avenue to disseminate important public health information quickly, across multiple platforms and in multiple languages.
The 14 countries these digital humans will be launching are Albania, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Moldova, Montenegro, North Macedonia, Serbia, Tajikistan, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.
Unith expect to deploy these digital human social workers in June 2024.
Where to from here?
AI is all the rage at the moment. There is money flooding into the space and plenty of companies looking to embrace this new technology. Unith have a head start, commencing work on artificial intelligence in 2019, but they are not the only company plugging into OpenAI’s GPT models and building AI avatars or digital humans.
So that is why it is worth noting that Unith won their contract with the Alliance for Public Health via a public tender process.
As competition heats up and more companies emerge with their version of AI chatbots or digital humans, that is a metric to watch. Which companies are winning business. And as with all conversations around new and emerging technologies, where are America’s Big Tech companies looking. We know Meta have been working on digital avatars for the (so far somewhat unsuccessful) metaverse push. These big tech names will always be big names to watch.
And in fast moving spaces there is always the business risk. Are AI-powered digital avatars the way of the future? Or will a new method of engaging with AI become the standard in the coming years? Unith is at the start of their commercialisation journey. They are signing customers and winning contracts but they are not yet profitable and may need to raise more money in the future.
But if Unith continues to build on its initial success – who knows, people the world over may be speaking to Unith avatars as they look to buy products online and then seek customer service once they need help with any of those products. Who knows where this technology may lead. One day, we may have a Unith chatbot looking over our shoulder via webcam instructing us on how to put together the latest frustrating piece of Ikea furniture. Or giving us personalised style advice as we browse The Iconic’s website.
We’re at the very start of a long technological journey with artificial intelligence. And we’re excited to see where it takes us.