The GTC21 conference keynote featured a digital clone of CEO Jensen Huang brought to life using artificial intelligence.
This past April, GPU manufacturer NVIDIA hosted its annual GTC (GPU Technology Conference), during which the company presented its GT21 keynote featuring NVIDIA CEO Jensen Huang. During the roughly two-hour-long presentation, Huang—who appeared on-camera multiple times throughout the presentation—detailed a variety of game-changing initiatives currently in development.
According to new information released by NVIDIA, however, the keynote wasn’t lead by Huang at all, but rather a computer-generated clone powered by artificial intelligence. Well, at least part of it was.
In a blog post released by NVIDIA earlier this week, the company revealed that a small portion of the virtual keynote was hosted by a digitized version of Huang. To create an accurate 3D model, the company scanned Huang’s face and body using a metaphorical army of DSLR cameras. After that, the team trained an AI to replicate Huang’s unique gestures and expressions. The result was a hyper-realistic digital clone nearly indistinguishable from its real-life counterpart.
“The demo is the epitome of what GTC represents: It combined the work of NVIDIA’s deep learning and graphics research teams with several engineering teams and the company’s incredible in-house creative team,” said the company in the blog post. “Digital Jensen was then brought into a replica of his kitchen that was deconstructed to reveal the holodeck within Omniverse, surprising the audience and making them question how much of the keynote was real, or rendered.”
NVIDIA’s Omniverse is designed as an open platform for virtual collaboration and real-time simulations. The company’s unique CGI keynote is a testament to the incredible power afforded by this exciting platform.
“We built Omniverse first and foremost for ourselves here at NVIDIA,” added Rev Lebaredian, Vice President of Omniverse Engineering and Simulation at NVIDIA. “We started Omniverse with the idea of connecting existing tools that do 3D together for what we are now calling the metaverse. If we do this right, we’ll be working in Omniverse 20 years from now.”
For more information on how NVIDIA brought virtual Huang to life, check out the official “Making Of” video provided above. You can also watch the full keynote for even more information on the company’s latest doings. According to NVIDIA, approximately 14 seconds of the keynote was hosted by Huang’s digital counterpart.
“Through all but 14 seconds of the hour and 48-minute presentation — from 1:02:41 to 1:02:55 — Huang himself spoke in the keynote,” said the company.
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Feature Image Credit: NVIDIA
