iQIYI Unveils First 4K VR Device and AI Assistant

At the launch event, Xiong Wen, vice president of smart device with iQIYI, introduced to the audience an AI (artificial intelligence) assistant that is built inside the "Qiyu" device. Nicknamed "Vivi", the virtual character in the form of a young lady can interact with users in all dimensions in the virtual world.

Created by iQIYI's hardware team Rainbow VR Studio and its Natural Language Process (NLP) team in collaboration with Emotibot, a firm dedicated to emotional semantics, "Vivi" is the world's first assistant of virtual interaction capable of providing basic emotional exchanges. Thanks to a deep integration of AI interactive system and VR operating system, it is a product based on a complete set of technology in NLP, effective computing and human-computer interaction.

Mr. Xiong said that Rainbow VR Studio, to make the virtual character perfect, had collected over 1,000 sets of body size data and they plan to develop "Vivi" into a heavyweight IP in the VR field in the future. In addition, he added, the company is also considering helping users customize their own virtual character through image modeling technology and motion capture of professional actors if they provide photos or images.

At the event, Mr. Xiong had a "face-to-face" talk with "Vivi"on the stage with the help of holographic technique, which impressed the audience.

According to iQIYI, "Vivi" can not only have fluent conversation with users, but can also read people's moods through emotion recognition technology and give proper responses. Traditional robots can only get the literal meaning of people's words via keyword searches. However, "Vivi" can recognize users' emotions like sadness, anger or happiness, and react like humans.

As the built-in AI "girlfriend" of iQIYI's VR device, "Vivi" also plays the role of AI OS, enabling one-touch access to iQIYI panoramic cinema and VR game Dinosaur Planet through voice interaction. In addition to functions like weather and air quality index forecast, "Vivi" will be able to intelligently select and recommend movies by interacting with her users.

In June 2014, iQIYI launched "iQIYI Brain" – the world's first AI system to understand human behaviors based on online-video data, which helped improve video special effects, content operation efficiency and precise recommendation for users. The launch of in-built AI assistant of iQIYI's 4K VR device this time has marked a milestone in the commercialization in the AI technology in global entertainment industry and also made people envisage what the integration of entertainment and AI will be bring in future.

SOURCE iQIYI