Soul App Takes Human-AI Interaction to a Whole New Level with EchoVerse

At the World Artificial Intelligence Conference 2024, Soul App brought out three noteworthy AI-integrated features - “Digital Twin”, “EchoVerse” and “Werewolf Awakening”. Of these, “EchoVerse” garnered a lot of attention from eventgoers given the unique scope it presented for human-machine interaction.

Positioned as a standalone application, “EchoVerse” can be thought of as Soul App’s answer to Replika.ai and Character.ai. These are AIGC products that allow users to interact with virtual beings, a facility that Soul App’s young user base is vying for.

A recently conducted survey that involved almost 3500 users of Soul revealed that almost half of all respondents were more than keen to not just interact with AI-powered platform features but to actually have an AI character as a friend.

This overwhelming demand is possibly what spurred the team behind Soul App to come up with EchoVerse. It needs to be mentioned here that the social platform already had AI Goudan, a chatbot that was designed to help users with the various features of the app.

But, the users of Soul App were very clear in their demand- they wanted more than just an AI-powered application that was an able conversationalist who could lend a helping hand when needed. They wanted a feature that would be capable of taking on any role and chat with them just for the sake of chat. 

EchoVerse was Soul App’s answer to their requirements. In terms of what it can do and how it works, EchoVerse is quite similar to Character.ai and Replika.ai, in the sense that the AI-characters created by EchoVerse or in EchoVerse can initiate and continue realistic conversations with human-like emotiveness, empathy, congeniality, voice tone, communication style and more.

Simply put, the virtual humans of EchoVerse can make the user feel as if the conversation is taking place between two human beings. In fact, so realistic is the output that people at WAIC 2024, who chatted with the virtual humans of EchoVerse, were left stunned by the contextual understanding displayed by these AI characters and their human-like responses.

For these coherent, insightful, and human-like interactions, EchoVerse depends on Soul X, which is Soul App’s homegrown large language model that is trained on humongous amounts of data involving human speech, interactions, communication styles, and cultural nuances.

With EchoVerse, users can customize the AI characters. For instance, users can choose the persona of the virtual human they are creating; from gender to occupation and from age to role. To set the image of the AI character, users can supply a desired picture or offer a text description and the platform creates an avatar for the virtual human. 

Conversations can be text chat-based or voice-based and users also get the option to choose from a number of basic timbres. The chosen voice is then fused with the AI character who will then continue to interact using the chosen voice, communication style, and role. 

Given the performance of EchoVerse, it’s obvious that Soul App has gone all out with this one, and it isn’t the only social platform that is keen on adding a feature like EchoVerse to its list of offerings. Just about every social network worth its salt is keen to jump on this bandwagon, and why not? As far as AI-powered applications go, AI-companionship is a hot and happening segment. In fact, it’s very likely that AI-characters will become mainstream sooner than later.

This begets the question - But, is there really a need for virtual humans? And if so, why? Without a doubt, Gen Z is more educated than previous generations and according to The Economist, ther spending power is really strong. Often called the first true digital natives, Zoomers grew up on steady servings of up-and-coming technology and as such more open and accepting of new technologies like AI.

Despite all of this, Gen Z is also one of the loneliest and the most stressed-out generation thus far. In fact, as far as Zoomers are concerned, loneliness has turned into an epidemic that they are finding hard to control. And this epidemic isn’t restricted to any one country or region. Youngsters across the world admit that it is hard to make new friends and maintain old friendships. And that is what has created the need for AI companions. 

Of course, neither Soul App nor any other AI-character applications claim that these virtual humans can displace actual human friendships but they sure are the next best thing, and AI characters definitely work when human friends are not available or when a chat with a friend is not feasible.

Of course, it is hard to tell if interacting with these virtual humans will help in the long run.  At this time, there are only a few studies on the topic but these do point to the positive effects of using AI companions. For instance, the participants of a 2023 Stanford Study admitted to feeling a greater sense of social support and decreased anxiety owing to these interactions.

A similar study conducted by researchers at Oslo University found that these virtual humans actually live up to many of the characteristics of friendship. For instance, study participants reported feeling a sense of trust because they knew that a virtual human would not go about snitching on them or gossiping about them.

Participants also said that there was a greater element of acceptance hence a greater scope for self-disclosure as AI characters do not judge the users nor do they get bored. Moreover, users can design the virtual characters of tools like Soul Apps’ EchoVerse, to attain a sense of similarity and empathy.

When all of this is considered, it comes as no surprise that dozens of Reddit threads are dedicated to discussions of how applications that are similar to what Soul App has come up with are helping youngsters to work on their social skills, discuss things that they wouldn’t normally dare to open up about even with their friends and explore new topics of conversation.

So, in a nutshell, while a program like Soul App’s EchoVerse will possibly never replace and should never replace actual human connections, it definitely has the potential to combat feelings of loneliness and even if this effect is temporary, it is better than nothing and nobody at all.