Tech and artificial intelligence company Crowd Media (ASX: CM8) has surprised the market with a beta launch of their ‘talking head’ technology which has been developed to drive their vision of conversational commerce – the next frontier of influencer marketing. 

The beta launch has been nicknamed Emma and is a visual projection of a sales representative that can assist customers of MD Complete, talking through their skincare needs and then offering product suggestions that meet these needs. 

“We believe conversational commerce is the future of eCommerce and are excited to have executed these various initiatives that bring forward the reality of one to one conversation between influencers and their respective followers,” said Crowd Media CEO, Domenic Carosa. 

“It takes us that much closer to our stated goal of actually changing the way products and services are sold via digital influencers. Our beta version was launched 12 months ahead of schedule and showcases our core AI driven chatbot technology and that of our partners. 

“By launching this beta version, we can undergo the next level of testing, build on our artificial intelligence and data pools, and advance the technology to extend its commercial capabilities across different products, services and interactions.”

The initial rollout of Emma will be used to showcase MD Complete beauty products but Crowd intends to launch this service over time across all brand partners for their Crowd Direct division which sells exemplary products and services integral to the lives of millennials. These products have been carefully selected to resonate with the younger demographic that form Crowd’s audience and are actively marketed to by their network of more than 1000 social influencers across 30 languages. 

The overarching goal of their conversational commerce tech and AI is to further develop Emma to be able to replicate celebrities and social influencers so that they can have 1-on-1 conversations in real time with fans, creating limitless commercial opportunities. To accelerate these plans even further, Crowd has entered in to a 50/50 joint venture with Israel-based VFR Holdings, owners of Zoe01 which launched Zoe Divr – one of the world’s first digital influencers which doesn’t actually exist in real life – and grown her to have more than 30,000 social followers around the world already. 

Under the JV, Crowd will invest $250k where VFR will supply tech with the aim of building a platform that can launch unique talking heads in just days at a fraction of the cost of current platforms which can take weeks just to develop one. Through this scalable platform, Crowd will be able to market to different demographics based on their consumer preferences and increase speed-to-market of their products and services in the process. 

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