Digital Domain, a visual effects studio whose work ranges from The Curious Case of Benjamin Button to Black Panther: Wakanda Forever, is partnering with Amazon Web Services to accelerate the development and global deployment of its Autonomous Virtual Human (AVH) technology by moving to the cloud and leveraging AWS’ generative AI and machine learning tools.
The company aims to expand the use of its AVH technology in areas such as storytelling, customer engagement, and interactive entertainment through real-time virtual human interactions across a range of industries, from entertainment to hospitality to healthcare. Reflecting this commitment, the company introduced a prototype virtual human, Zoey, for such purposes in 2022. The studio’s work with digital humans for film dates back even further, notably in David Fincher’s 2008 fantasy film The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, where Brad Pitt’s backwards playing character won a VFX Oscar.
“This collaboration with AWS marks an important milestone for Digital Domain and our ambitions in virtual human technology,” said Daniel Xia, CEO of Digital Domain. “Moving our autonomous virtual human technology to the cloud will not only improve its scalability and performance, but also make it more accessible to users around the world.” He pointed to potential opportunities, for example, through Digital Domain’s partnership with airport hospitality company Plaza Premium Group.
Development efforts also include the use of Amazon Bedrock and its underlying models, as well as Amazon Polly, to help enhance voice output. Digital Domain reported that the company is also exploring the use of Amazon Rekognition for facial recognition and video-based services.
“As virtual humans play a bigger role in customer-facing engagement across industries, Digital Domain is making its visionary AVH technology accessible to everyone by combining the most secure, broadest and most reliable global cloud infrastructure with AWS generative AI and ML services. We look forward to working with Digital Domain to further expand AVH’s capabilities and bring virtual humans to more AWS customers,” said Samira Bakhtiar, general manager, Media & Entertainment, Gaming and Sports, AWS, in a statement.
