Acryl (CEO Park Oe-jin) announced on the 7th that it participated in the restoration project of Baekbeom Kim Gu's digital human and implemented a digital human kiosk that can even converse with voice.
Acryl first unveiled Baekbeom Kim Gu's digital human at the '84th Patriotic Martyrs' Day' commemoration ceremony held at Seodaemun Independence Park in Seoul last November. It is part of a national project jointly conducted by the Ministry of Patriots and Veterans Affairs and Acryl Consortium (Acryl, Viv Studios, Level Nine).
An official who participated in the restoration process at the time stated, "The ultimate goal is for Baekbeom Kim Gu, restored using artificial intelligence (AI), to interact naturally with us today." Several months later, that dream was realized by building an 'interactive kiosk' at the Baekbeom Kim Gu Memorial Hall near Hyochang Park.
Acryl is a company that has focused on the 'full cycle of AI introduction' from AI service planning to development, operation, and customer service support for over 13 years based on its own ML Ops.
Based on core source technologies and abundant development references, various factors were considered in the process of restoring the Kim Koo digital human. ▲ How to build a reliable and accurate knowledge system of historical figures ▲ What AI technology elements will be applied for vivid two-way communication ▲ How to secure the sustainability of restoration and management of digital veterans: three major questions.
In particular, when restoring real people as 'digital humans', meticulous data purification and processing are essential. It is necessary to include information (events, relationships, etc.) of the real person, as well as specify the 'answer range'. In the case of the Kim Koo digital human implemented by Acryl, the focus was on past historical facts rather than the present. This is because if excessive responses are derived from political and contemporary questions at the present time, it could go in a completely different direction from the original intention of 'returning the great dedication (RETURN) and making it stay in the heart forever (STAY).
In addition, various AI technologies had to be applied in order to create a complex 'digital human' rather than a single element such as 'text' or 'voice'. Examples include speech-to-text (STT), text-to-speech (TTS), fine-tuning of language models specialized for specific scenarios, large language models (LLMs) that can respond universally, ethics verification, emotional engines, automatic gesture control of AI humans, and lip-sync control of voice and appearance.
Among these, Viv Studios, a virtual production specialist, was in charge of facial restoration (graphics) and voice restoration based on actual data, and Acryl was in charge of building a 'pipeline' for real-time conversation between viewers and digital humans, from viewer recognition (vision) to intent recognition, response generation (LLM, STT, TTS, ethics verification, and dialogue engines), and voice-3D appearance synthesis.
In particular, restoration and management are essential for digital humans as they can continue to be exhibition and educational content. Accordingly, an AI digital human integrated operation (automated control) platform was built to enable ▲ loading and processing of veterans' data ▲ restoration of appearance ▲ restoration of voice and persona ▲ restoration of intelligence (LLM + multi-modal chatbot) ▲ production of content utilizing restored digital figures ▲ distribution and operation ▲ AI distributed learning, GPU efficiency management, etc.
When you actually encounter Mr. Baekbeom Kim Gu, his skin is so clear that you can see it clearly thanks to the ultra-high definition graphics. A sensor is built into the kiosk, so when you approach him, he automatically recognizes you and appears.
It answered various questions such as "How many times have you been in love in your life?" and "What is your best memory?" with natural speech and gestures. Above all, its strength is that it recognizes voice and pronunciation at a high level, enabling smooth communication.
Meanwhile, recently, 'digital humans' are actively being used to restore a persona beyond mere graphics. Furthermore, the concept of digital twins and digital humans is being applied to clinical trials and population surveys overseas.
Acryl said that in addition to Mr. Kim Gu, it has also completed the restoration of digital humans for Ahn Jung-geun and Yun Bong-gil, and is actively researching ways for digital humans to become established as 'real-world use cases'. It also said that it is in the process of building a 'digital human' using LLM such as ChatGPT and supplying it to museums, exhibition halls, etc.