By Variety | Created at 2024-09-26 15:25:10 | Updated at 2024-09-30 09:38:19
3 days ago
Visual effects studio Digital Domain — the company whose credits have ranged from “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” to “Black Panther: Wakanda Forever” — has teamed up with Amazon Web Services to accelerate the development and global reach of its Autonomous Virtual Human (AVH) technology by migrating it to the cloud and involving AWS‘ generative AI and machine learning tools.
The company aims to expand the use of its AVH tech in areas including storytelling, customer engagement, and interactive entertainment with real-time virtual human interaction, in industries ranging from entertainment to hospitality and healthcare. Reflecting this work, it introduced prototype virtual human Zoey for such purposes in 2022. The studio’s digital human work for film dates back further, notably with David Fincher’s 2008 fantasy “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button,” for which the company’s work in aging Brad Pitt in reverse earned a VFX Oscar.
“This collaboration with AWS marks a significant milestone for Digital Domain and our ambitions in virtual human technology,” said Digital Domain CEO Daniel Seah. “By migrating our Autonomous Virtual Human technology to the cloud, we are not only enhancing its scalability and performance but also expanding its accessibility to a global audience.” He pointed to its potential, for instance, through a Digital Domain partnership with airport hospitality firm Plaza Premium Group.
The development work also involves use of Amazon Bedrock and its foundation models and Amazon Polly, to help enhance voice outputs. Digital Domain reported that it’s also considering using Amazon Rekognition for facial recognition and video-based services.
Said Samira Bakhtiar, general manager of media & entertainment, games, and sports at AWS, in a statement: “As virtual humans play a larger role across industries to engage directly with customers, Digital Domain is ensuring that everyone has access to its visionary AVH technology by combining it with the most secure, extensive, and reliable global cloud infrastructure, as well as AWS’s generative AI and ML services. We look forward to working with Digital Domain to further expand AVH’s capabilities and bring virtual humans to more AWS customers.”
