A life size ‘hologram’ was created at Microsoft Inspire 2019 to deliver a virtual keynote, translated from English into perfect Japanese in real time.
The ‘Mini-Me hologram’ of Julia White, CVP, Azure Marketing, was created using the Microsoft Hololens-2 in combination with Azure’s AI technology with White’s avatar being created by capturing her appearance and outfit at a mixed reality studio
The ‘hologram’ created a keynote delivered in perfect Japanese to a live crowd at Microsoft Inspire 2019 in Las Vegas, USA, rendering White’s voice in real time using her unique voice signature to create a deepfake-esque facsimile of White’s voice, delivering an AI rendered keynote in fluent Japanese.
Julia White, CVP, Azure Marketing explained: “We used mixed reality technology to create my hologram and render it live. Then, we used Azure’s speech detect capability and English transcription to get my speech, then used Azure translate to get the speech into Japanese and finally, applied neural text to speech technology so it sounded exactly like me, just speaking Japanese.”
While the ‘hologram’ is imperfect and showed undeniable latency issues, the development marks a significant step forward in the development of 3D communication and seamless translation of global languages.
Where could hologram technology be heading? Inavate will publish an investigation into the development of hologram technology in the commercial space in August, exploring the future of videoconferencing,distance learning and product development in the virtual world.