As millions of jobs around the world face the threat of being replaced by ChatGPT and similar generative AI, artificial intelligence company Unith (ASX: UNT) may hold a vital key in advancing mass adoption by being able to give the AI a human face, feeling and emotions. 

Keen for a slice of the early action, institutional and sophisticated investors have been keen to secure large stakes in Unith which has undertaken a $4.5 million private Placement. The Placement has been upsized with documentation from Peak Asset Management, the Lead Broker, indicating that the intention was only to raise $4 million. 

For the past few months, ChatGPT has been the talk of tech circles after its creators OpenAI made it publicly available in November 2022, and for free. Since then, students have used it to write entire assignments, politicians have used it to write speeches and casanovas have even used it to woo their Tinder matches. 

So far the most common question is, what can’t generative AI do? 

ChatGPT is powered by OpenAI’s latest generation of AI: GPT-3, an autoregressive language model that uses deep learning to produce human-like text from 175 billion parameters. But at the moment, it’s purely text-based and can only converse with users that also engage in text form. 

The power of ChatGPT has been well known by Unith CEO Idan Schmorak for years though, prompting a change in the Company’s direction when he was appointed CEO of Unith in 2021. Rather than compete with it, he saw an opportunity to embrace GPT-3 by giving it a human element that text-only conversations lack. These human elements are generated by Unith’s Talking Head platform which produces digital humans that look and react like real people, but their vocalised content is generated by conversational AI. 

Funds raised will be applied towards an integration with ChatGPT that will enhance Unith’s digital humans to communicate responses that ChatGPT would, but as audio rather than text, and in more than 60 languages already supported by Unith’s Talking Head platform.

Unith CEO, Idan Schmorak commented, “We are incredibly pleased to see such a strong level of demand from institutional and sophisticated investors in UNITH.  I would like to thank existing investors for their continued support and welcome the new investors onto our register, including a prominent Australian Family Office that entered our register via this Placement.

“Interest continues to grow in conversational AI globally, and UNITH is strongly positioned at the forefront of the industry with our unique proprietary technology to benefit from this growing demand.  

“The Company is now well funded to continue progressing our development and commercialisation activities, which will focus on building scalability into our business model and further enhancing our technological edge.”

Making the upsized capital raise more impressive was that Unith elected not to offer any discount from the 30-day VWAP (value weighted average price), raising at an Offer Price of $0.033 per share. In lieu of a discount, those who participated were allocated a bonus Option that can be exercised at $0.06 before 25 July 2024. Should all the Options be exercised, they will provide Unith with an additional $8.1 million in cash.

To date, one Big Five Tech company (Amazon, Meta, Microsoft, Google or Apple) has already engaged Unith for a conversational AI solution for an undisclosed fee. 

While the Big 5 Tech company that has engaged Unith is yet to be disclosed as per confidentiality agreements between the two, all five are actively pursuing artificial intelligence to consolidate the future of their businesses to avoid being left behind in the wake of competitors. 

The one most advanced in the AI space may be Microsoft which just last week announced more than 10,000 staff layoffs in the same week as their USD $10 billion investment in OpenAI (creators of ChatGPT). 

The full extent of the investment has not been disclosed but synergies are expected to see increased usage of Microsoft Azure (cloud services) and other Microsoft AI projects. 

Digital humans to date deployed by Unith in the public space are primarily entertainment and education focused. But behind closed doors, the Company has confirmed development work for digital humans to be deployed in professional environments where they have discussed customer service, human resources and healthcare as fields they have been engaged for conversational AI solutions. 

Could the next digital human to be showcased by Unith go by the name of Bill?