Gemini’s Live Avatar Puts a Face on Its AI Agent. It’s Freaking Me Out
Pretend you’re not talking to a lip-synching avatar.
Google's new Live Avatar feature for its AI agent Gemini Enterprise is making waves. This innovative technology merges an interactive visual experience with conversational AI, offering a unique approach to customer support. Available to businesses with Google Enterprise, Live Avatar allows users to select from a variety of avatars to face the bot's voice during video chats. One such use case mentioned by Google is processing insurance claims through video chat.
The versatility of Live Avatar is impressive. It can handle live video avatars with lip synching for conversational videos, all while simultaneously processing live audio, screen sharing, and video feeds. This means the avatar can run tools and API calls, continuing conversations with customers without any hitches. The avatars can even run more fluid dialogue with native speech-to-speech for "more natural interruption recovery without dropping conversation context or backend transactions."
However, the idea of a cartoon or realistic-looking avatar's lips moving to match a bot's voice while handling a request is quite unsettling. While Google has implemented safeguards to prevent misuse, such as using curated, prebuilt avatars or a verification process for custom avatars, the technology still raises questions. It's unclear how or when Google plans to make Live Avatar available to the general public and how it will safeguard the sensitive information (like addresses, names, and live video) that the AI agent receives during video calls.
Written by urgent.news from CNET's reporting — not their text. Machine-written — may contain errors; check the original before relying on it.
