New avatar uses compliments to sell products

A new avatar responds in real time and compliments your fashion sense

Spotted: Canadian/German startup Twenty Billion Neurons (TwentyBN) has created an avatar designed to sweet talk shoppers. Millie sees, understands and interacts with people in real time. Drawing on vocabulary and experiences from millions of real conversations and interactions with humans, she can make conversation and give high fives.

In videos, Millie is engaging, if a bit stilted. She reacts to someone entering her line of sight and follows hand gestures. While her high-fives are a bit slow — leaving people hanging — she is quick to catch on to other physical prompts like clapping and jumping.

Millie is being marketed as “the ultimate assistant” for everything from sales to personal coaching. In a demonstration, she fed potential consumers compliments as they tried on sunglasses.

TwentyBN CEO Roland Memisevic presented Millie at a technology conference in Canada in December 2018.