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Virtual Humans brings an exciting frontier in technology, offering new ways for people to interact with digital environments and each other. Virtual humans can be utilized in a variety of contexts, but one of the most successful applications so far has been in people training. For example, industries such as sales, healthcare, and customer service have leveraged virtual humans to provide realistic, interactive training experiences. These AI-powered digital personas help learners practice essential skills, improve communication, and build confidence in a safe, controlled environment.
In this article, we explore what Virti Virtual Humans are, how they can be used across multiple industries, the challenges of ensuring authenticity when making a virtual person, and the future trends in Virtual Humans we expect to see.
What is a Virtual Human?
Virtual Humans or virtual people are digital avatars created to mimic human behavior, emotions, and communication. Technology such as Artificial intelligence (AI), motion capture, 3D animation, and speech synthesis help make these computer generated characters hyperrealistic to look and sound like actual people.
This makes AI Virtual Humans the ideal training tool for employee upskilling as they provide interactive, lifelike scenarios in which learners can practise essential skills in a safe, controlled environment.
Importance of Virtual Humans in Modern Human Training
Therefore, today, virtual humans are playing an increasingly vital role in enhancing human interaction, skill development and training. They offer numerous benefits, such as:
- In customer service – Virtual humans provide realistic customer interactions, allowing employees to practice handling inquiries, resolving issues, and demonstrating empathy in a safe environment. This leads to improved customer satisfaction and more confident service teams.
- Better personalized learning – AI-powered virtual humans adapt to individual learning styles, delivering customized training experiences that keep employees engaged. Interactive, scenario-based lessons help learners retain information and develop skills more effectively.
- Improved healthcare training – In the healthcare industry, virtual humans assist in patient diagnosis, mental health support, and medical training simulations. This enables professionals to refine their skills through lifelike scenarios, improving patient care and decision-making.
- Increased accessibility – Virtual humans make training more inclusive, providing support for individuals with disabilities and breaking down language barriers with multi-language capabilities. This ensures that all employees have equal opportunities to develop their skills and excel.ices tailored to individual needs.
FYI: Virtual humans can be used in training for law enforcement roles, providing realistic role-play scenarios that enhance skills and decision-making in high-stakes environments.
How Virtual Human studios ensure realistic digital personas
Now more on the technical stuff on how Virti creates their virtual human software, there are ‘Three Pillars of Creating Digital Humans’.
To craft digital humans that feel genuinely lifelike, studios typically follow a three-step process:
- Capture: First, real human features, movements, and expressions are carefully recorded using advanced tools like motion capture suits, high-resolution cameras, and even biometric sensors. This ensures the digital persona reflects natural human nuances.
- Modeling: Next, this data is transformed into detailed 3D models, meticulously building the character’s appearance, physical structure, and behavioral patterns. Artists and engineers work together to replicate everything from facial expressions to unique body language.
- Synthesis: Finally, these elements come together in rich, interactive scenes. Studios animate these digital humans, assess how convincingly they interact within virtual environments, and refine their behaviors to ensure authenticity and relatability.
By focusing on these core pillars-mcapturing, modeling, and synthesis Virtual Human studios bring digital personas to life, making them not only visually realistic but also deeply engaging to interact with. When making Virtual Humans, there are several critical factors to consider, including:
- Character movements
- Environments
- Animations
How Virti creates its Virtual Humans
At Virti, we use a Content Delivery Network (CDN) and Unity Addressables to create realistic expressions, customizable environments, and lifelike motion in virtual people. A CDN is basically a network of servers spread out across different locations to speed up content delivery by bringing it closer to the user.
While Unity Addressables help manage game assets better, making loading times faster and storage more efficient. These two vital factors help:
- Utilize advanced lighting effects to implement dynamic lighting that adapts to different environments to make and their environments more immersive and realistic.
- Use procedural animation techniques via Addressables to ensure efficient loading that gives smooth, lifelike movements when making virtual people.
- Ensure effective asset management to make sure the most up-to-date and optimized assets are used across all platforms.
- Improve realistic two-way communication to enhance the speed and realism of Virtual Human responses.
By combining machine learning and generative AI, our Virtual Humans give learning and development teams full control of conversations. These relevant and realistic interactions, whether free-flowing or structured, can be tailored to specific learning objectives. Our Virtual humans utilize conversational AI, computer vision, and advanced 3D graphics.
At Virti, we’re constantly improving virtual humans using user feedback and advanced technology to make AI experiences more immersive and help users connect more deeply with AI characters.
Our Virtual Humans are specifically designed for AI roleplay to ensure they deliver an immersive experience for learners. We’re always improving our Virtual Humans and focus on functionality, realism, and learning outcomes.
How to create virtual humans?
One of the most compelling aspects of virtual humans is their ability to be customized to meet specific needs. This customization includes:
- Facial expressions and body language: By fine-tuning facial expressions and human body language, virtual humans can convey emotions and reactions that make interactions feel more natural and engaging.
- Voice and Accents: Selecting from a variety of voices and accents allows virtual humans to be more relatable and appealing to diverse audiences. Large language models play an essential role in enabling virtual humans to understand and generate natural language responses. This customization helps in creating a more personalized and immersive experience.
- Personality and Tone: Defining a virtual human’s personality and tone ensures that interactions are consistent and tailored to the context. Whether it’s a friendly customer service agent or a stern virtual instructor, these elements enhance the overall user experience.
Here’s a quick tutorial on how to create Virtual Humans in Virti, where you can fine tune the customizations mentioned earlier.
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How are Virtual Humans being used across industries?
There are many applications for digital people and digital humans. Some of the most common uses currently include:
Virtual environments are integral platforms where users interact with virtual humans, avatars, or digital representations within immersive and digitally constructed spaces. These environments have evolved to support real-time animation and user interaction, allowing for realistic engagements through gestures, speech, and other interactive features.
Virtual humans can deliver consistent training, ensuring uniform skill development and knowledge retention across all learners. Here’s how some industries are using Virtual humans.
Retail and customer service
Retail brands are also making good use of Virtual Humans to assist customers online. These AI virtual people act as customer service representatives who are available 24/7 to help with customer questions in a human-like manner.
Businesses that maintain a human-first approach use Virtual Humans to train new employees to provide better customer service. Whether this be over the phone or in person. Upskilling using Virtual humans takes away the fear of failing and gives employees a safe environment to practice in.
Healthcare
Virtual people and digital personas that act as digital patients are helping health professionals practice procedures and diagnose illnesses to develop their skills further. In some cases, Virtual Humans can also provide therapy, offering conversational support to those who need it.
These virtual humans can mimic real human behaviors and characteristics, enhancing their effectiveness in healthcare applications.
Sales training
Industries of all shapes and sizes are using Virtual Humans in their sales training programs to help users develop essential skills ranging from effective communication to closing deals and managing customer relationships. Sales reps can practice critical interpersonal skills such as negotiation, objection handling, and building rapport by engaging with realistic Virtual Humans and immersive environments. These scenarios can be accessed with mobile or desktop, providing learning to sales reps when they need it.
Entertainment
Virtual Humans are already playing a significant role in the entertainment industry. The film and gaming industries are building Virtual Humans into games and CGI-based movies. With hyper-realistic textures, expressions, and movements, it is often difficult to tell them apart from real actors.
An ‘AI Wonderland Adventure’ offers an immersive and imaginative experience where users can engage with AI in unprecedented ways, creating unique and deeply engaging experiences in the entertainment industry.
Online and social media
Virtual humans can serve as digital personas in social media, collaborating with brands and hosting events. These virtual individuals engage audiences by leveraging sophisticated AI, natural language understanding, and realistic facial animation to create authentic interactions.
Challenges Virtual Human studios face when creating authentic digital personas
While the progression of Virtual Humans has undoubtedly come a long way, some challenges still exist to ensure authenticity. These include:
- Overcoming the uncanny valley: This is a term used to describe the feeling people get when a Virtual Human looks good but not quite real.
- Ensuring emotional authenticity: Replicating human emotions is one of the biggest challenges Virtual Human studios face when creating virtual people. When reacting to context, it is hard to convey subtle emotions or give the right sentiment.
- Interactivity and spontaneity: Some Virtual Humans can still feel wooden and scripted. While AI has improved this greatly, there is still some way to go before Virtual Humans react with the same flexibility as humans.
As technology such as AI continues to advance, the ai interactions and movements of Virtual Humans will become even more lifelike.
It is also anticipated that virtual humans will be used in more diverse applications such as education and travel, with digital persona teachers, virtual actors and tour guides becoming commonplace. More customizations will also be possible, meaning users may be able to create digital training buddies that provide emotional interaction and help with improving our workforce.
Explore Virtual humans
If you are interested in utilizing Virtual Humans in your training program, try creating one yourself using Virti, it makes inutes.
