The rapid development of virtual companions - is the era of friends in real life really coming to an end soon?
Posted: Sat Feb 01, 2025 4:01 am
Xiaoice, a company, has launched its own social platform. Xiaoice Island allows you to create virtual and realistic friends based on artificial intelligence. The inhabitants of the "island" can praise, joke, console or act as an assistant. The application has already been installed on 1 billion gadgets, and in the future the number of virtual people may well exceed the population of the planet.
The AI-powered social networking app was developed by Chinese AI pioneer Xiaoice, which spun off from Microsoft more than a year ago. The AI developed by Xiaoice can compose and sing songs, draw pictures and edit videos.
The Xiaoice AI system has already created over 17 million virtual characters that are saving Chinese users from loneliness. It is reported that AI-based friends will also move to the Xiaoice Island app.
To some extent, the virtual island functions and works like brazil number data WeChat, a popular social networking app in China developed by Tencent Holdings. WeChat allows users to interact with artificial intelligence, communicating with it in text, audio and video formats, both in dialogue and in group chat.
“The virtual person will praise you, joke with you, and even create a group chat with other characters to comfort you when you say you’re unhappy,” says Li Di, CEO of Xiaoice.
Xiaoice has spent many years studying how to create an AI companion with emotional intelligence.
Xiaoice, which launched in 2014 as a chatbot, now powers voice assistants on more than 1 billion devices, including smartphones and smart speakers, through partnerships with Xiaomi Corp, Oppo, Vivo and others. It has also signed deals with automaker BMW and electric vehicle maker NIO.
Extensive interaction with users allows Xiaoice to have a large amount of data to constantly improve its capabilities.
Lee explains: In order for AI-based beings to be more human-like, it was very important to make them diverse and imperfect. When AI can’t answer a user’s question, the machine might politely reply, “Sorry, I don’t understand.” But a real person might respond, “Why are you asking so much? Have you finished your homework yet?”
Harry Shum, chairman of Xiaoice and former executive vice president of Microsoft, believes that eventually almost everyone will have an AI-based personal assistant.
“The number of AI-powered beings will likely exceed the entire population of the planet, because people may need different personas to meet different needs. Xiaoice wants to be the platform that will enable them,” says Shum.
The AI-powered social networking app was developed by Chinese AI pioneer Xiaoice, which spun off from Microsoft more than a year ago. The AI developed by Xiaoice can compose and sing songs, draw pictures and edit videos.
The Xiaoice AI system has already created over 17 million virtual characters that are saving Chinese users from loneliness. It is reported that AI-based friends will also move to the Xiaoice Island app.
To some extent, the virtual island functions and works like brazil number data WeChat, a popular social networking app in China developed by Tencent Holdings. WeChat allows users to interact with artificial intelligence, communicating with it in text, audio and video formats, both in dialogue and in group chat.
“The virtual person will praise you, joke with you, and even create a group chat with other characters to comfort you when you say you’re unhappy,” says Li Di, CEO of Xiaoice.
Xiaoice has spent many years studying how to create an AI companion with emotional intelligence.
Xiaoice, which launched in 2014 as a chatbot, now powers voice assistants on more than 1 billion devices, including smartphones and smart speakers, through partnerships with Xiaomi Corp, Oppo, Vivo and others. It has also signed deals with automaker BMW and electric vehicle maker NIO.
Extensive interaction with users allows Xiaoice to have a large amount of data to constantly improve its capabilities.
Lee explains: In order for AI-based beings to be more human-like, it was very important to make them diverse and imperfect. When AI can’t answer a user’s question, the machine might politely reply, “Sorry, I don’t understand.” But a real person might respond, “Why are you asking so much? Have you finished your homework yet?”
Harry Shum, chairman of Xiaoice and former executive vice president of Microsoft, believes that eventually almost everyone will have an AI-based personal assistant.
“The number of AI-powered beings will likely exceed the entire population of the planet, because people may need different personas to meet different needs. Xiaoice wants to be the platform that will enable them,” says Shum.