Digital Human

In this technical walkthrough, Fred Allen demonstrates how WWT created a sophisticated digital human named Ellie in just five weeks. Ellie is an innovative, AI-powered avatar capable of real-time, multilingual interactions. Fred explains the intricate process involving multiple technologies, including speech processing, a custom LLM for generating responses and audio-to-face technology for realistic facial animations. He details the hardware setup, software components and the seamless integration that allows Ellie to engage in context-rich conversations across languages. 

Fred Allen III, Software Engineer, gives a demonstration of Ellie, a digital human developed in the AI Proving Ground. This digital human is based on the NVIDIA​ AI Blueprint for building digital humans.​​ It can be deployed as a fully self-contained solution at the edge or scaled on-demand in corporate or cloud data centers. Its digital human knowledge base is customizable.

As enterprise AI strategies mature, the user interface is evolving beyond chatbots. Enter the digital human — real-time, emotionally aware, multilingual AI avatars designed to mimic human interaction with uncanny realism. In this episode of AI Proving Ground Podcast, WWT Chief Technology Advisor Ruben Ambrose and Area Director of Strategy an Innovation Eric Jones unpack their journey building WWT's own avatar, "Ellie," and offer a revealing look at the infrastructure, latency tradeoffs and feedback loops driving this frontier.