Are AI avatars the future?
A new startup called bythen certainly believes so. Aiming to democratize access to personalized AI avatars, the company has outlined ambitious plans for an AI product protocol to generate autonomous and 3D avatar agents.
Whether you’re looking for a personal companion, a digital assistant, a gaming NPC, or a specialist in areas like tax, marketing, or HR, bythen’s avatars are designed to meet a wide array of needs.
Bythen is set to launch a collection of 1,888 NFTs, entitled the bythen Chip Collection, which will serve as a multifaceted gateway to its ecosystem. These chips will provide early access to unique bythen avatars, upcoming airdrops, and other exclusive benefits.
Bythen recently announced its $3 million seed round, which received support from East Ventures, ED3N, Dingaling, Beenext Ventures, Guildfi, Giulio, Grail, Icedcoffee, AppWorks, and others.
nft now caught up with bythen founder and CEO Kevin Minaraga (aka Mosu) for a deep-dive interview on the project’s forthcoming launch and future plans.
nft now: What are the current challenges you see in the AI landscape and how is bythen aiming to provide a solution?
Mosu: In recent times, the AI landscape has experienced remarkable growth, particularly with the advent of Large Language Models (LLMs). LLMs have emerged as powerful tools with the potential to revolutionize the way humans interact with machines, pushing the boundaries of natural language processing (NLP). LLMs are deep learning models trained on vast amounts of text data, enabling them to generate, summarize, translate, and answer questions with unprecedented fluency and accuracy.
Despite the vast possibilities that LLMs offer, there are several constraints that hinder their widespread adoption and limit their full potential. These constraints include limited emotional intelligence, inherent limitations in contextual memory retention, lack of personalization in interaction, limited domain knowledge often the cause of hallucination issues, and the inability to perform action-oriented tasks. bythen aims to address these challenges in the AI landscape by providing cutting-edge solutions that enhance user experience.
The project is pioneering an innovative product that enables individuals to have their own unique and highly personalized bythen Avatars that serve as users’ personal AI Companion, capable of delivering valuable services to end-users. These unique avatars are specifically designed to empathize with users, respond appropriately to emotional cues, and possess extensive contextual memory. This memory capability allows them to maintain context, recall previous conversation details, and develop tailored interactions based on individual user preferences and history, ensuring a more human-like, personalized, and emotionally intelligent experience for users.
Bythen is also addressing the limited personalization in AI interactions by introducing 3D avatars that serve as a visual interface to the AI Engine. While traditional LLMs primarily communicate through text-based chat, bythen recognizes the importance of visual elements for establishing emotional connections between users and their AI Companions. By integrating 3D avatars, bythen enhances the communication experience with visual representations of movement, expressions, and gestures, providing users with a more immersive and engaging interaction.
To tackle issues of limited domain knowledge and hallucination that are dominant in today’s LLM, bythen’s solution to this constraint–what the project terms “AI Agents”–has the potential to dramatically improve the intelligence and extend the capabilities of bythen’s AI Avatars, allowing them to not only perform typical LLM tasks like information retrieval and content generation but also execute various tasks/actions for users.
What differentiates the bythen AI avatars from others in the market?
Bythen avatars are like personal AI assistants, reminiscent of Iron Man’s Jarvis, but distinguished by their emotionally intelligent and human-like attributes. These avatars provide personalized, empathetic, and engaging experiences through several standout features:
They are highly personalized AI companions that adapt to user preferences by analyzing dialogue, inferring personality traits, and integrating data from social media to create a comprehensive user profile.
Bythen focuses on emotional intelligence, enabling avatars to empathize with users and respond appropriately to emotional cues, which enhances the human-like interaction.
The avatars are presented in visually appealing 3D, making the interactions more immersive and unique compared to traditional text-based AI.
Bythen avatars feature adaptive learning and long-term memory capabilities, learning from interactions and storing relevant information to provide accurate, personalized responses.
Users can access both private and public avatars: a private one for personal assistance, and a public one for interacting with others, serving various roles like a digital alter-ego or domain-specific expert.
Bythen also introduces a network of AI Agents—specialized agents with specific expertise, such as booking transportation or managing tasks within the Web3 ecosystem. These agents enhance the capabilities of Bythen avatars, with an initial set developed by Bythen and more expected to be created through incentivized community efforts.
Additionally, Bythen is developing “Bythen LAB,” a platform where community members of all skill levels can collaborate on developing new AI Agents, leveraging diverse expertise to continuously improve the avatars’ capabilities.
How do you envision the bythen ecosystem evolving?
The bythen ecosystem is envisioned to evolve through several interconnected facets that contribute to its growth and advancement.
As stakeholders actively participate in developing domain-specific AI Agents, bythen Avatars are becoming more versatile and better equipped to meet a broad range of user needs. These avatars are set to evolve continuously with generative AI technology advancements, enabling increasingly human-like interactions. By focusing on enhancing capabilities such as natural communication, emotional intelligence, and task automation, bythen aims to drive user adoption and engagement.
bythen is also committed to nurturing a thriving community of users, developers, and stakeholders who contribute through feedback and active participation. Strategic partnerships and collaborations with other industry players are leveraged to enrich the bythen ecosystem further by offering additional services and capabilities.
Regarding personalization, bythen avatars collect and analyze increasing amounts of user interaction data over time. This ongoing engagement helps to develop a deeper understanding of each user’s preferences, habits, and needs, allowing avatars to better tailor their support to each individual’s unique requirements.
As the ecosystem expands, bythen is focusing on developing a scalable and adaptive infrastructure to accommodate an increasing user base and data processing needs, alongside the growth of the AI Agent network. This approach ensures a seamless user experience as the platform evolves.
What are your plans for the bythen native token?
The bythen native token is crucial for creating a sustainable and balanced ecosystem. It’s designed to drive utility and incentivize participation across various areas.
On the demand side, tokens are used to purchase bythen Avatars and pay for subscriptions that enable these avatars to interact. Users can also use tokens to access and upgrade their avatars, unlocking new features and customization options. Additionally, tokens can be staked to ensure the quality of AI Agents within the ecosystem and allow token holders to participate in decentralized governance, helping shape the platform’s future direction.
For supply, tokens reward AI Agent developers through bounties and usage-based compensation, encouraging ongoing development and enhancement of AI capabilities. They’re also used for community rewards, airdrops, and other engagement initiatives, promoting active participation and fostering a sense of ownership among community members and NFT holders. This comprehensive approach ensures that the ecosystem remains vibrant and continuously evolving.
What does the future of AI avatar innovation look like to you?
The future of AI avatar innovation is incredibly exciting and promises to fundamentally change how we interact with technology. Imagine avatars becoming hyper-realistic, so lifelike that they blur the lines between virtual and real. They’ll be able to understand and respond to a wide range of human emotions, making interactions feel more empathetic and meaningful.
These avatars won’t just communicate through speech; they’ll also use gestures, facial expressions, and body language, making conversations more immersive and intuitive. As they learn from interactions, they’ll become highly personalized, adapting to individual users’ preferences, behaviors, and personalities.
Plus, these avatars will seamlessly integrate across multiple platforms, ensuring you can maintain a consistent digital presence no matter where you are online. The world will increasingly embrace these avatars, using them as digital identities and leveraging them to manage schedules, handle routine tasks, and boost productivity. This isn’t just about improving how we interact with our devices; it’s about transforming our entire digital experience.
The post Inside bythen’s NFT-Driven Vision for the Future of AI Avatars appeared first on nft now.
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