Comment by mapt
2 days ago
I still remember an experience as a kid decades ago, either at Epcot or with the Sony quasi-museum in NYC, where they had an apparently robotic greeter with a personality, who after five minutes you deciphered was actually an improv comic running a telepresence robot.
I don't know if I'd trust an AI's reliability here. It takes one Tiktok video of the AI coloring outside the lines of its character and the whole project gets cancelled as a threat to Disney's image.
For the less physical characters, especially the ones that aren't conveniently human-sized, I'm sure telepresence is at least more comfortable than a plush suit on a Florida summer day.
Disney's had a notable amount of success with that formula. Turtle Talk with Crush arguably saved The Living Seas pavilion space at EPCOT, and it's executed via a digital puppet operated by a behind-the-scenes cast member doing their best Crush voice.
I sincerely doubt that what makes that experience magical can be replicated with AI in my lifetime. Too much contextual knowledge, too much detail in the nuances of human-human interaction, and too much je ne sais quoi in the timing of getting humor right. I've seen Turtle Talk deal with a particularly excited young person leaning on Crush's "tank" by having Crush look at him and go "Hey little minnow... One of the big humans behind you is gonna come scoop you up. I've seen it happen, lots of times!" You can program that interaction in, but the domain-space of having an interaction for every possible "improv moment" might be outside the bounds of what the next several generations of learning models are capable of.
... or I'm wrong, in which case I look forward to enjoying robo-Seinfeld in the retirement home.