With public interest in digital worlds accelerated by the transition from Facebook to Meta and the upcoming launch of their Metaverse, artificial intelligence company Crowd Media (ASX: CM8) has given a glimpse into its plans within these digital worlds.
Unlike others that are just coming to the party in the form of virtual reality tech, Crowd Media has been developing its digital avatar platform for the past three years, drawing on its artificial intelligence and deepfake technology. Utilising a series of still images, Crowd Media’s platform is set to create life-like replicas of any person that will provide them with a digital avatar in the Metaverse or other online worlds being targeted by their digital avatar platform.
Well before the world was aware of Mark Zuckerberg’s plans for the Metaverse, digital worlds have been ‘live’ with two of the better known ones being Second Life and Decentraland.
Decentraland in particular has been particularly popular within tech circles with the entire world built on the blockchain with assets traded via online marketplaces in the form of non-fungible tokens (NFTs). The world operates with its native MANA cryptocurrency which trades at a market cap of USD $6 billion. This week, Crowd Media released a screengrab of a billboard erected by the Company on a block of digital land acquired in Decentraland.
“This is a space that we expect to see mass adoption in over the coming years which is why it is a sphere that Crowd is actively targeting,” said Crowd Media CEO, Idan Schmorak.
“As a big opportunity that Crowd can adapt its digital avatar technology to, users in these digital worlds will start seeing Crowd Media branding more.
“While the billboard is static at the moment, we are working on integrations that will enable users to interact with it. At the same time, we will also seek to acquire more digital assets, including within the Metaverse, as part of our commercialisation plans for the platform.”
In previous media appearances, Schmorak has voiced his intentions to utilise Crowd’s digital avatar platform which not only rolls out digital avatars, but embed them with conversational intelligence. With this intelligence, digital avatar talking heads have the potential to interact with real users within a digital world with use cases including processing transactions, providing customer service or acting as an outlet for minting new NFTs.
“We are hoping to finalise one of our first deals over the next week that will position our talking heads in front of thousands of users. Debuting this beta technology will be a milestone on one hand, but on the other hand it will allow us to gather data that will help us to develop the final version for more scalable commercialisation,” said Schmorak.
With Crowd’s digital avatar platform having been conceptualised as a platform that will enhance avatars with visual, audio and intelligence that mimic the original human, it should come as no surprise that Crowd is also exploring their ownership in the form of NFTs.
Having been appointed CEO of Crowd Media in September 2021, Schmorak assumed the role vacated by co-founder Domenic Carosa, a well known early-stage investor in Bitcoin, and founder of cryptocurrency company Banxa (TSXV: BNXA). Although stepping down to concentrate on Banxa and various other blockchain projects, Carosa retained a seat on the Board of Directors at Crowd Media and maintains his major shareholder status in Crowd.
Alfred Chan is a Business Reporter at The Sentiment specialising in ASX-listed small cap companies, a bloodstock enthusiast and former equities analyst.
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