What’s Real?

A TED Talk was published a couple months ago about a CGI AI avatar influencer

named Imma. Imma is an avatar created with CGI and her creators design images of her in various places doing various things imitating real influencers. During this talk the speaker argues for the potential of “virtual humans” in improving human connection and self expression. In this project I will be covering our response to this new phenomenon and the arguments presented in this TED Talk.

Lies, The First Sign of Bad News.

The first thing that I want to address about this TED Talk that stood out to me the

most is that the speaker repeatedly lies about what this fake human is “actually

doing”. She repeatedly claims that “Imma” is acting on her own accord to “go to cambodia”, “making a dress out of trash to save the environment”, “Imma is joining us live from Tokyo”, and more.

This is beside our point addressing this TED Talk. However, we did want to point it out as it did strike us as odd and off-putting.

Gen Z Doesn’t Care What’s Real.

During the talk the speaker claims that Gen Z doesn’t care that Imma isn’t real and 

feel a real connection to her. Just as an anecdotal refute of her argument, I happen

to be a part of Gen Z and do care. I do not feel a connection with this fake human being, even if a team is posting pictures of “her” brushing her teeth.

However, the biggest problem I have with her statement is that she is equating social media engagement with real connection. While Imma has almost 400k followers on Instagram, that says nothing about “real connection”. The fact that Imma is an avatar and not a human is interesting to people because it is new.

What’s real?

Imagine ten years from now, living in a world where digital people are indistinguishable from real people. What will matter in that world? In our opinion, all that will matter is novel and useful creation.

Top four comments on the TED Talk

Many comments on the TED Talk had a very negative reaction to the fact that Imma is not a real human. However, this is not what we have a problem with. For example, if a young person wanted to share projects online but didn't want to reveal their identity, a CGI avatar paired with an AI voice would be a great solution and something I'd have no problem with. What really matters is if the CGI avatar is expressing novel and useful insights that are meaningful to me.

There is a YouTube channel called Lameversity that replicated Paul Graham’s voice using an AI tool. That channel puts out videos of AI Paul Graham reading real Paul Graham’s articles. Do I care that it’s an AI reading it? No! What matters to me is that the content conveyed in the videos are valuable.

These technology tools are just that: tools. Tools to be leveraged by humans to further our impact on the world. Now, we can do cooler things more effectively and efficiently. I’m not mad about that. However, I am concerned that the first instinct we have is to create a novel but not useful CGI influencer.

What's real in this new environment? In my opinion the way we can tell what originates from genuine human expression and creativity is if something is novel and useful. Even if it comes from an AI tool, did it come from a novel and useful prompt? At the end of the day the origin of all creation is human initiative, even if mostly produced by digital tools. But what's real depends on the quality, creativity, and authenticity behind it.

Is Imma real?

Given our new definition of “real” in the age of AI, no. This is no message of meaning 

to what this “Imma” character is putting out online. She isn’t adding real value to anyone. The reason why Imma is getting attention is because virtual humans are a novel concept right now. However, as more virtual humans flood the market, it will cease to catch attention.

Imma is novel. She’s just not useful.

It’s a shame because her creators could start leveraging what they’ve built to add real value to real human beings. I hope that someday they can see that.

The problem for social media influencers.

Social media influencers often get attention by exploiting human’s base desires for

status, luxury and beauty. They will flaunt their bodies with expensive items to gain attention online. Imma is just replicating what these influencers are doing.

Currently, influencers are gaining attention because these things are scarce. However, increasingly that will cease to be that case. Soon everyone can be beautiful online avatars and pretend to live in a fancy mansion with a fancy car traveling to fancy places.

Imma is not meaningful. She is simply part of the wave of fake AI influencers helping to reveal that these influencers were shallow, and in my opinion fake, in the first place.

What is the value of relationships?

“What if we can create relationships like we do with friends, family, coworkers and

even with our alternative selves through virtual humans?

…

Imma is the first example of so much more to come.”

The speaker is arguing that we can fake relationships by eliciting the same

emotions. But there are several key aspects of relationships that AI can't replace.

What makes relationships valuable isn’t just a "feeling of connection". Valuable relationships keep us in check. We know that if we are mean and unreasonable, the people in our lives might leave. These AI avatars don’t leave so it doesn’t satisfy this need.

Valuable relationships challenge us to step outside of our comfort zone, confront inaccurate beliefs and push us to do better. It’s incredibly hard to try to train an AI to do what’s actually best for humans because that’s not something you can easily measure. However, you can measure whether humans continue engaging with the AI, which is often the metrics these AI’s use.

The connection between humans and tech.

The speaker is arguing for a growing connection between humans and technology. What this fails to recognize is that technology is a tool, and we should use it that way. Humans gain meaning from engaging with other humans and that has always been the case. 

Creative and emotional intelligence is what makes us human. While it will increasingly be difficult to discern what’s real or not online, it should give us hope that we are fundamentally different from AI models, and certainly CGI characters. What I believe will matter in the future is simply if you are adding novel and useful value to others. If you can leverage technology to do this more effectively, more power to you.

My prediction is that humans that are fake will have as much relevance as fake characters in a world driven by AI and automation. That is to say, negligible value. If you want to stay relevant in this new world, become an individual by exploring who you are, what the world needs (that is to say, other humans), and how you can add value.