On a recent post in their newsroom, Samsung interviewed several members of the Galaxy S10 AR Emoji development team about how the feature is coming along and what its future is for their augmented reality (AR) avatars. According to graphic R&D group member Jinho Lim, the ultimate goal with AR Emoji is to create virtual assistants.
“Ultimately, our goal is to make AR Emoji a personified visual assistant in the coming age of AI (Artificial Intelligence). For example, currently Bixby can give us updates on the weather, but I believe that information could be delivered more effectively by an AR Emoji holding an umbrella.”
Jinho Lim, Graphic R&D Group at Samsung
Additionally, the AR Emoji team plans on making the feature far more robust so that people can customize it to make their avatars more expressive, as MinKyung Lee, member of the media UX group, explains:
The global trends are centered around incorporating more and more decorative tools. However, we have also tried to be focus on being inclusive, with features like artificial hands currently available, and artificial legs to become available soon. By continuing to add more customization tools to AR Emoji, we hope to help people better express themselves. But we also want to see AR Emojis become a place where users’ imaginations can be brought to life.
MinKyung Lee, Media UX Group at Samsung
Integration of AR and AI could prove useful for people in extended realities (XR) provided that the virtual assistants are robust enough to make lives easier. Samsung is merely another company on the list of ambitious developers merging AI and XR – Microsoft is currently pursuing a partnership with Semantic Machines to bring virtual assistants to HoloLens 2, and Talespin is blending virtual reality (VR) and AI to develop soft skills training courses.
