Across the room, a man with a large camera working for Hour One, a Tel Aviv–based video agency specializing in providing clients with lifelike virtual humans, filmed Finley from the waist up. Over Zoom, a director offered instructions about how much to move his hands. He was done in less than an hour.
When Finley first learned that he could license his virtual twin, he had reservations. He was skeptical that a digital double, as the nascent sub-industry calls it, could capture his personality. He also disapproved of A.I.–generated avatars eventually taking jobs from people. Then again, the situation enabled the impossible. “You can be in two places at one time,” he said, and the new income stream meant that “as you get older or you’re on vacation, your avatar is still virtually making money for you,” possibly speaking a language he has never learned, without ever aging beyond 36.
And so Finley accepted an initial payment of $500 and signed a contract giving Hour One a certain number of credits to book his twin in videos used for marketing, product tutorials, online training, employee onboarding, and more. If he was in high demand, Hour One, which lists Nvidia, Microsoft, and DreamWorks among its clients, would buy more credits from him.
“It’s
a new technology—either you hate it or you love it,” Finley said. So
long as the company kept its promise to keep him out of political,
sexual, and malicious content, he was open to loving it....<<<Read More>>>...