The Future of AI Avatars and DeepFake Technology w/ Joshua Xu & Steve Brown | EP #161

0:00Where does this go? What's your vision for where this is going? How will I use these avatars? Very very certain. We're actually gonna see it. Everybody be able to have a meeting with the agent and in the video interface. Joshua Xu. Joshua Xu. Joshua Xu. The mind behind Hagen. He is redefining how we create and communicate. You will be able to have your agent taught to people in different languages. 175 languages that's insane. I'm very excited about the mission that we have enabling, you know, feature -stop -telling for all. The technology's gotten so extraordinarily powerful, and yet we're just at the very beginning.

0:39We take Chas and Safety seriously on the platform. Every single avatar quit on HGEM will require the first party consent. This is the future which is available when. Now.

1:03So Joshua, you have built an extraordinary company. I mean, I think truly if you have, know anything about digital avatars, Hey Jen is the top of the game. Congratulations. Thank you. So how long ago did you start Hey Jen? Tell me a little bit about your journey. You know, I want to understand where your technology is is in our conversation, understand where it's going? Sure, definitely. The journey of Hagen started back in 2020. A long ago in 2020. Yeah, I think that was the time that we didn't had the term call generative AI. And I was working at very similar technology enabling using AI technology to enhance the camera screens as STEM.

1:53And I just felt that the technology can continue to evolve and potentially generate something that does not exist in the world, but still feel high realistic. So that's how we started the company. In fact, I think the funny thing about the mission of a company in the beginning, we call it replacing the camera. And because I think if we look back the past 15 years, mobile camera is really the thing that enable a lot of people creating content. But still, there's so many people are not being able to like create a good content using the camera either because camera shine or camera being very expensive in business.

2:32And we felt that if we can we praise the camera, we can move the barrier for the visual storytelling for the business. And that's how we started the journey. Amazing. Well, you've come a very far away. I think you've got a video to kick us off to give us a sense. Let's run that video so folks can get a sense of your technology. Hey everyone, I'm Joshua and yes, I'm here on stage with you, but I'm also right here as his digital twin. Do we look alike? This is Hagen's Avatar technology in action. I can deliver video messages without a camera or production crew. This ranges from video ads to how -to videos, to trainings and so much more.

3:08I can also speak in over 170 languages and dialects. For example, hola, abundancia, tresacenta, estoi, muy emocionado, de sumerjime contigo, en el futuro de la generación, de videos con inteligencia artificial. Besides just speaking different languages, I can even engage in real -time conversations, whether it's on your website, product, or platform. Imagine what this could mean for your business. Joshua and Peter, I'll let you take it from here. Okay, nice. I love that.

3:42The technology's gotten so extraordinarily powerful, and yet we're just at the very beginning. So where does this go? What's your vision for where this is going? How will I use these avatars? Yeah, so I think things are happening in two ways. I would say one thing is that every individual will be able to easily visualize their ideas and every business will be able to access more videos equation, every business will be creating hundreds, you know, hundreds of more videos in the business communication. And I think the business content is going to be more engaging compared to the old days of email images, taxes.

4:27That's one. And that's happening very, very fast today. We have seen customers like creating tons of videos like promoting their business. I think on the other side, which is also very exciting, I think everybody's know, you know, the AI agent role is like happening very fast as well. And, you know, I think the next interface for us to really interrupt the AI agent maybe actually we started from chatting by typing the text. And then I think it's got a very, very soon we're going to interrupt the agent with voice interface. And then very, very soon we're actually going to see it everybody be able to like meet, you know, have a meeting with the agent and in the video interface.

5:03And I think that's something that we are seeing, you know, very exciting for the future. Yeah, I mean, I think you've been building these avatars and you can have your avatar go attend a Zoom meeting for you. Yeah, right? Yeah, I mean, I love that. I don't know about you guys, but some Zoom meetings, I would much rather have my avatar do the work. Yeah, I think about this in the future where I can build a really rich an agent that knows everything about me, knows everything about my company, that if you ask the agent a question and ask me a question, you're going to get the same answer. Imagine being able to create not one, but like a thousand agents and send them out to a thousand different conferences on your behalf.

5:47Go and cut deals and bring back business for you. Is that possible? Is that where we're going? Yeah, I think you know, not only about that, I think there's another thing that you will be able to have your agent talk to people in different languages, which was not possible before. And you know, it is always hard to touch customers in different regions, different language. And now you can really enabling that. And this one, I think the second thing is that you can really like in run your agent meeting in parallel and having your customer into betting with you at the same time like hundreds thousands of different sessions happening at the same time.

6:28Yeah, the other thing is I know about you if you are working on new products and services. I know my team will bring me in and say, hey, can we get you to record a video at this particular time? but you put the video up and it's not hitting properties who want to change the pricing, want to change the name, want to change all these things. Instead of pulling me into camera or hiring someone to come in and talk about your new longevity clinic or whatever it might be, you can spin up your agent avatars to iterate rapidly as quickly as you want, right? Yeah, yeah, I think that's exactly how we, you know, Start the company and solve the camera piece problem and in fact, you know, even for myself I only create probably you know more than 300 different avatars In the past four years because we just tested all the technology But even today if you have me to like really like you said I want to film something in front of camera I still feel like or I need to do some preparation for that I might sometimes need a one or two we shoot and I need to pick up a good lighting things like that But I would really help to solve that problem for for people and being able to light create content anytime Yeah, I know remember last year Steve Brown my chief a officer member of our community here Who will be coming out and joining us in a couple minutes?

7:52He created a Peter bot avatar of myself right which uploaded all of my knowledge all my books all my podcasts Everything known about me and I did a podcast with Peter bot And I was blown away. Peter Bott was much more eloquent, much more knowledgeable, much smoother. I mean, honestly, I felt very deficient in front of Peter Bott. It didn't stammer to remember something in its memory, and it was just very compelling. And so there's, it's incredible power that you have. Yeah, yeah. And that's very exciting. Just getting started. Yeah, it's just getting started. I know you've got a marketing video, which I've asked you to play because I want people to see all the different ways that people can utilize this.

8:38I really want this to be one of the technologies everybody plays with this year. It's easy. You just have to make a commitment to actually try it. So please, you know, one of the things I'm looking for you to do is commit to certain things. This is one of them. Let's play that marketing video if we could. Yeah, sure.

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9:54Everybody, I hope you're enjoying this episode. Did you know that we're likely to see as many as 10 billion humanoid robots by 2040? And that Brett Adcock, the CEO of Figure Anticipates, will have robots in our home in the next two to three years. How about Max Hodax, new form of BCI called Biohybrid Interfaces that could offer millions of connections between your neocortex and the cloud? Then there's Michael Andregh, whose efforts at IAN is focusing on uploading the human connectome to the cloud by 2030. These aren't science fiction scenarios. There are serious efforts underway today. I've distilled the most powerful insights and road maps from this year's abundance 2025 summit into a comprehensive report that will transform how you see the future.

10:44Get your free copy of the Abundance 2025 Summit Summary at dmandis .com slash breakthroughs. That's dmandis .com slash breakthroughs. I find that extraordinarily impressive. We're going to talk about in a few minutes how each of you can walk away with your own HGN avatar this week, right? It should be something that all of you commit to do, including the teens, I would love you guys to do this. So let's talk about the two parts. There's the voice and then there's the video persona. And one of the improvements in the video persona is hand movements, backgrounds. I mean, that's relatively recent.

11:27Can you speak about that? Yeah, so, and if you look at the technology itself, you know, what we're truly building is a human -centric video model. Right. So I think the difference is about human -centric video model versus general video model is that, you know, we need to be able to, like, present and engaging effect, like, such as gesture, and the way how you move, and you move your body, body languages, and expression, things like that. And there's a couple of elements out there. Voice is definitely one. I think videos are another one. And what we usually require is that we'll take roughly two minutes of chaining footage from you.

12:08two minutes video. Two minutes of video. And then our AM model will try to learn that from how you speak, how you must move on your face and your expression, and as well as very importantly how your body language match your expression. Because everybody's body language is different. I think the two -minute footage will help us to really personalize your model of behavior and after that. And that's roughly how it works. And obviously, if we build our own AI agent behind it, you need to input the knowledge base that you have and whatever documents or keynotes interview you might have before. And we need to enable that as LAM layer behind it.

12:51Yeah, it's truly amazing. Let me suggest two things to everybody here if you've not done this. And I think they're very important in this age of, you know, photorealistic visual and auditory avatars. The first is you're going to receive a phone call from somebody you think you know. And it may be a FaceTime video from someone you think you know. And they may ask you to do something incredibly crazy like, can you please wire money here or can you please send money so I can get out of jail? I'm serious. I've had lots of friends who've had that happen to their aging parents and so forth. Everybody here, one thing that you should do is choose a word, a password or something, that if you have any doubt about the authenticity of the phone call or the video call you're getting, ask for it, right?

13:51It makes sense. It's super easy to do. Have that conversation at dinner. The second thing is if you're lucky enough to have your parents or grandparents around, do two things. If you can, record their avatar. If you can't do that, sit them down for a couple of hours with your iPhone and ask them for their story, for their history, record their video, record their voice and this is for your kids and their grandkids, right? Please do that. It's extremely valuable. You'll be able to bring them back as your family history. Make sense? Great. So Joshua, let's talk about what you have enabled for us here at the Google Tech Hub.

14:41Yeah, sure. So we have both in the back. We are giving the opportunity for all the intended attendees to create your own digital twin over there right at the conference. And it's for free. And you're going to be able to recall your footage, the tuning footage for the AM model tuning, and then going to be able to get your avatar today. And it is a glimpse to the future of AI video creation and then you know we'll be able to let Tess out on your HNK. Yeah so I want you to see how good this is. We had a few members do this last night and I want to show you one of them that got processed overnight.

15:26RyKar, are you here in the audience? Where are you? Okay, RyKar, good to see you my friend. I'm waiting for my flying Jetson As soon as I can get it, let's watch Reichart is Avatar. So he's not backstage, he's over there, let's play the video. From now on, I can speak in any language with my own avatar and my own voice. This means that I can communicate with anyone without caring what part of the world is. It's not just about a question of translation. My avatar captures my expressions. I want to make everyone understand what I said. It seems like I can use their own language. I want to learn more about my language and my language.

16:14With this technology, I can communicate with every person. Welcome in a new era of communication. Amazing. Let's give it up. I was extraordinary. And record, how easy was that to do?

16:36Four minutes of your time. And then an infinity, 175 languages, that's insane. So this, again, please take this home with you. Play with this. Your whole goal here is to do something different. You know, at least show it to your kids or your spouse when you get back. Yeah. It was about 13 years ago I had my two kids, my two boys. And I remember at that moment in time I made a decision to double down on my health. Without question, I wanted to see their kids, their grandkids, and really, you know, during this extraordinary time where the space frontier and AI and crypto is all exploding. It was like the most exciting time ever to be alive.

17:21And I made a decision to double down on my health. And I've done that in three key areas. The first is going every year for a found upload. You know, found is one of the most advanced diagnostics in therapeutics companies. I go there, upload myself, digitize myself about 200 gigabytes of data that AI system is able to look at. to catch disease at inception. You know, look for any cardiovascular and cancer, neurodegenerative disease, any metabolic disease. These things are all going on all the time and you can prevent them if you can find them at inception. So super important. So found is one of my keys.

18:01I make it available to the CEOs of all my companies, my family members, because you know, I help this in you wealth. But beyond that, we are a collection of 40 trillion human cells and another 100 trillion bacterial cells, fungi, a viarite. And we don't understand how that impacts us. And so I use a company and a product called Viome. And Viome has a technology called Metatranscriptomics. He was actually developed in New Mexico, at the same place where the nuclear bomb was developed, as a biodefense weapon. And their technology is able to help you understand what's going on in your body to understand which bacteria are producing, which proteins, and as a consequence of that, what foods are your superfoods that are best feed -to -eat?

18:54Or what food should you avoid? Right? What's going on in your oral microbiome? So I use their testing to understand my foods, understand my medicines, understand my supplements, and Viom really helps me understand from a biological and data standpoint what's best for me. And then finally, you know, feeling good, being intelligent, moving well is critical, but looking good when you look yourself in the mirror, saying, you know, I feel great about life is so important, right? And so a product I use every day twice a day is called one skin, developed by four incredible PhD women that found this 10 amino acid peptide that's able to zap senile cells in your skin and really help you stay youthful in your look and appearance.

19:44So for me, these are three technologies I love and I use all the time. I'll have my team link to those in the show notes down below. Please check them out. Anyway, I hope you enjoyed that now back to the episode. What's most exciting for you in the future here? I'm very excited about the mission that we have enabling, you know, visual storytelling for all. I think today when we talk about video, video submitting format for people to consume on the internet. And but still I think less than 1 % of the audience, less than 1 % for people are able to actually create great videos. And I think cameras are first problem and we are actively solving that.

20:32And also with a lot of agent technology from the AI model advancement, I think video editing is going to be solved with AI very soon as well. And think about the world like this, you know, every time you want to send an email, instead you could actually turn that email into video and and send it to a whole company and give the video format to the customer so they can watch it on their own. I think those are the future that we are very excited about. I agree. I know that some people are concerned or scared about their identity, their image being stolen and being used to promote something they're not involved in, but you have protections against that, don't you?

21:14Yeah, we do, definitely. So first of all, we take trust and safety seriously on the platform. every single avatar created on Hagen, we require the first party consent, where you have to give a video consent format so that we can verify that. So you have to go on video and say this is Peter D. Mendes and I give consent to create this avatar, etc. Yeah and we are probably to say that in the entire history of Hagen, we never compromise on that consent. And with who's coming coming to quit after on HGEM, we always require that. And meanwhile, we also have a moderation system behind it, just serve as a safeguard.

21:54There's a lot of things not allowed on HGEM platform, things like, hey, speech, fraudulent, and any political campaign. Today, we have a strictly moderation team in the bad, combined with AI and human moderators, to help to make sure that the technology has been at a good use. Yeah, I'm so impressed. Last year, I tried to get a video acknowledgement from Aristotle to get that video made and he never responded. But thank you for allowing it to happen. Last question here. Let's discuss the difference between integration of an AI agent and my digital clone. Yeah, the way how I look at it is in two ways, right?

22:39When we talk about AI agent today, where mainly talking about this AI assistant that can help us to do something not only at the first action but also a sequence of action. And I think when we talk about digital twin is the enablement about myself. It's like, you know, let's say Peter, you want to have three meetings happening at the same time and it's kind of like agentize yourself so that other people can get access to you. And I think there's a combination overlap of this two where, you know, okay, the question would be, how does a human interact with the agent in the future? I think the most natural way to interact with the agent would be a video format, would be a video call, would be a video chat.

23:28So I think, you know, you can kind of like attach your digital twin in your AI agent so that other people can interact with it. And meanwhile, you know, you can also get access as to other people's agent in a video -check format. I don't know if you can feel the speed, the future speeding up in this very moment, right? So when you hire 20 marketing agents, AI agents, we've been talking about, those AI agents will show up as you'll give them names, they'll show up on Slack, you can Slack them, you can email them, you can hop on a video conference with them, You can have a Zoom call with your marketing force of 20 AI agents and they will look unique.

24:13You'll have conversations with them. This is the future which is available when? Now. Now. All right. The following segment is a presentation from Steve Brown on exactly how to use these AI my avatars in your business and life. One thing I wanted to ask you is like, how many of you are at this point confused about the difference between avatar and agent? A little bit? Okay, I'm gonna give you a little shortcut to figuring it out. Avatar is AV, audiovisual, agent is agency. And if you're gonna give agency to your agent, it needs to know you and you need to trust it. So how do you make that happen?

25:01It's one thing to have that emotional connection because it looks fantastic. And it acts like you, it looks like you visually, but we need to train the brain. So that's what I've been working on now. Last, this past 12 months have been, the 12 months of avatars. And now we are all we're gonna talk about as agents from here on app. So first of all, how do you train your agent? So you're gonna go and make a great avatar downstairs. And I did a great one last night. So I'm not gonna show you, we already saw records. But I actually built agents to help you train your agent. So asking you all about your life story, asking about your values, asking about your purpose, asking about your personal anecdotes and all these things.

25:41So you can talk to your agent forever to train your story about, so that your actual legacy agent or clone will know all about you. So these means by which in just interacting a voice conversation, you build the corpus of data that makes that agent actually meaningful to you. You have a lot of books and you have a lot of things upload. A lot of people don't. You have your Facebook and your LinkedIn and your social media. But what's really important is your values, what you care about, your personal story, the depth. And that might be hundreds of pages. If you're to write a biography, that's hundreds of pages.

26:20So anyways, I'm building agents that help you actually train your agent. So now, beyond that, what can you use your agent for? Another thing I've been using agents for, this is a medical agent, and we'll hope that he works. He's actually connected to my medical records. So just talking a little bit about your story, so knowing your story for future generations. So my story has been one of entrepreneur, and then I'd admit this fabulous entrepreneur, an entrepreneur mentor, Peter, which is stimulated, even more ideas to go start new ventures. But in the last couple of months, actually, my own story took just a quite radical turn.

27:04It started off with the fires in LA two months ago, which happened to Burner House Down. For the second time. Well, the first one was a rental, so it didn't really count. But this was like, you know, the dream home. Out of the owners. And, yeah, I mean, well, anyways, yeah, we lost our stuff before, but this was a much more traumatic event. But it actually turned out to be something else. Lee Stein, who's here, said, Steve, you need to look for the gift. If you don't look for the gift, you're not going to find the gift. So we were displaced from Los Angeles. and my wife and I and our 170 pound grape dainn we ended up staying with friends in Palm Springs.

27:49And I ended up in the emergency room because of state dinner, pain, thinking that I was obstructed. I went to the ER and got a CAT scan. And the ER doctor is like, hey, there's something going on here. I got admitted to the hospital and for many, many more tests and biopsies and everything. And I ended up getting diagnosed with multiple myeloma blood cancer. And while I'm in the hospital for eight days. This is about six weeks ago. Yeah, so I'm in the hospital and I'm like, of course, I'm just talking to AI the whole time. What's going on here? What does all this mean? And I had just had not found in life, I'm sure found in life would have figured this out.