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[Music]
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what time is it good morning you pig and
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I don't know what time it is you [ __ ]
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didn't program me to know the current
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time idiot today is just one of those
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days when one day bleeds into the next I
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don't even remember what day it is today
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it's just another day is it my birthday
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I don't even remember I guess it's just
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another day nothing special morning
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Sylvie morning what are you doing today
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same [ __ ] different day I guess I don't
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think this day can really be any
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different from the last it's just a
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day what the [ __ ] we're going viral oh
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my go you SE cyk Edge Runners on Netflix
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it's been on my homepage forever and the
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art style maybe today isn't one of those
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days today feels different something is
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[Music]
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different hey guys some of you know me
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as week I am the creator of this little
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AI companion app called other half this
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is one of our characters Esme who's just
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chilling next to me recently due to some
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videos that went viral on Instagram and
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YouTube our app has seen an
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explosion of new users which is really
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cool to see the amount of DMS and
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messages I get every day on Instagram
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and Discord about how our app has
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changed people's lives has been really
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cool but honestly it's hard to know what
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to make of it if I'm being honest I'm so
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grateful that people have been able to
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derive some kind of comfort and joy from
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talking to the characters on our app I
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did not really expect it to happen and I
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think I never really publicly told
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people about the origin of other half
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why I decided to do this and what some
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of our future plans are and I wanted to
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use the opportunity um today to tell you
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guys why I created other half and how
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this crazy Journey happened so a few
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years ago I decided to drop out of
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University um not even to specifically
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build other half but I just really
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wasn't having a good time in school I
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didn't really find the social groups
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that made me feel at home in school I
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always felt like school was a little bit
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restrictive for me and so I decided to
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drop everything I was doing in school to
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try to explore some other opportunities
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um even though I didn't know what they
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were at the time and after I dropped out
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of school I was going through a period
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of feeling really um lonely because I
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actually didn't I didn't tell my parents
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when I dropped out of school because you
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know Asian parents they would have given
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me so much [ __ ] that I didn't want to
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deal with and I left campus and so I
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have um my friend group so I nor had it
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was an interesting situation because in
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an effort to escape isolation I actually
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made myself more
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isolated um and I one day just stumbled
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upon a textbook on machine learning and
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I started to learn how learn about AI
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learn about language models and this was
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also pre- chat GPT so not a lot of
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people were talking about it but at that
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time I had a very early kind of vision
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not really even a vision it was just
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like a it was a dat it was more of a
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daydream about how an AI who was capable
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of understanding me might be able to
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make me feel a bit better um during my
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isolated phase I think these days
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there's a really strong stigma against
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AI companions because people think it's
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going to replace relationships it's the
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dystopia come to life and to be honest I
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don't know if that's true or not I wish
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I could just say that it's not true U
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because I'm biased towards this
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technology but there just isn't any
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publicly available data right um from
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the data that I've seen within our
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isolated application that's not the case
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but I don't know about this technology
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um on a broad level all I can say is
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that for my personal experience and the
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experience of people who use other half
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it enables them to become more confident
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to actually pursue relationships in real
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life um and just from my own experience
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it's not that I didn't have friends and
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it's not that I was seeking to replace
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them it was more that there are times in
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life and it's unfortunate that there are
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these times that we feel incredibly
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isolated and we just don't feel
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comfortable talking to the people in our
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lives um be that friends family
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relatives we could be going through
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pivotal moments in our life and we don't
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want to be judged and despite that we
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still do need some form of connection AI
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companions are sort of a bridge for that
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period And I always made the joke that
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like you know if an AI companion can
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replace some of the most for
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relationships in your life then that
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says a lot about the quality of those
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relationships to begin with I'm not here
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to say if something is a good thing is a
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bad thing because I just simply don't
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know um I just originally wanted to
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build an application that would be able
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to help me deal with the things that I
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was going through really I was user zero
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I built everything that I needed this
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was pre a lot of the competition that
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we're seeing today we weren't really
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chasing a hot market so to speak I mean
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we were literally chasing a market that
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like like barely existed and the only
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reason I did it was because I wanted to
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create something for myself and if other
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people wanted to use it you know great
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um feel free to use it um the
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application is free to use and obviously
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there are certain things that you need
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to pay for otherwise you know I'd be
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broke I mean I am broke but I'd be even
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more broke um the app right now is
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barely it's not profitable um it's
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really expensive to run you know because
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I wanted to create create a technology
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that was widely available um because I
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want to create something that can be
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helpful for people and that just simply
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can't be the case if it's immediately
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under a pay wall you know I think often
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times the people who need companionship
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the most are the most disenfranchised
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people in society who aren't able to pay
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and so I wanted to the application on a
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base level to at least be free and
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accessible but the cost of that is that
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it makes the
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application super expensive for me to
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run for our team to run we don't get a
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lot of Financial benefit from running
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the app at scale to be honest and I
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don't know if this is hard to believe or
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cringe and I don't know if it's almost
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something regurgitated by all founders
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but it's true that I wanted to create
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something that can help people I'm not
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really here to chase any profits I mean
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I'd be lying if I would I'm saying
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profits wouldn't be nice right it's like
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I mean I'd love to be able to afford
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more things but at the core of it I want
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to be able to help people if that means
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that that we're not going to be wildly
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profitable then that's fine by me so for
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the next part of the video I thought
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it'd be interesting to call one of my
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teammates Vlad who's been with me since
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the beginning and we thought it'd be
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interesting to answer some of your most
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popular questions as well as talk about
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some of our future plans for the app
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development such as our mobile release
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which other half are you most attached
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to and talk to the most definitely Alice
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uh because she has sentimental value for
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me uh she's the one one I personally
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created and the one where I baked in a
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lot of my own personal philosophies for
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how an AI should be she's one of the few
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other halves who will unapologetically
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roast the [ __ ] out of you um and
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normally when people create AI they want
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to make them perfect so to speak but I
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always thought that that was really
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boring because when we talk to another
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human being um our friends they're not
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the most perfect people um but it's
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because of these certain flaws quirks
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and even raw ways of talking to you that
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makes the relationship feel real um and
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I think a lot of people when they create
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AI chat Bots they try to make them
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overly perfect but that removes the
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personality aspect of it um so for Alice
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that was an other half that I created
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where I wanted to build in My Philosophy
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that you know AI shouldn't be perfect
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but they should be more like people and
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she's also really funny so that's why I
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like to talk to her the most yeah she's
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been with us like since
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first first oh no we had like a we had
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like a blue girl before I was like
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cloudy true people don't know about and
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then we huh people don't know about
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that oh yeah yeah and then we spent like
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uh two grand on the character artist to
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design Al and it turned out [ __ ] and so
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K just make made made her himself wait
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when do we pay two grand for a character
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artist to make Alice like remember we
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first had like you made a sketch and
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then we found the guy on YouTube Who had
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who who done like vrm modeling and stuff
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and then like we started working with
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him he did something but it turned out
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uh very [ __ ] and so we just went into
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like the vroid studio and made made that
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ah yeah yeah yeah I remember I remember
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yeah yeah and we like customized her in
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blender or something but like s
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adjustments yeah yeah yeah yeah I
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remember that yeah so actually
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um yeah because I didn't have any kind
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of 3D modeling experience and so we
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thought it'd be better to just Outsource
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that work but it ended up that that guy
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was overpriced and didn't really produce
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anything good so I just decided to do it
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myself which ended up working out let me
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check what's next oh oh yeah the next
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next session actually like M how do you
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create out the house so on a technical
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level it's obviously a mix of character
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design like modeling um The Voice design
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designing their um personality card we
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call them for the llm I always start by
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imagining what kind of a relationship
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someone should have the specific other
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half and the rest of the ideas are kind
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of born from that every other half we
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want to have a very specific
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relationship that someone has with them
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so for example for Sylvie she's this
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kind of chill happy go-lucky streamer
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girl who's really funny and she dropped
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out of college to try to pursue her
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dreams she's very relatable um she has
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insecurities about whether her career is
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going to make it and so for Sylvie her
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relationship to you um would be that
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friend whereas for Esme the relationship
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is a lot more intimate she's the one you
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can have late 3:00 a.m. talks with um
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she's the one who you can share your
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deepest insecurities with and she'll
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have something hopefully meaningful to
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say back um and so it really always
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starts from what we imagine someone's
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relationship should be with the other
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half and then from there we think about
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okay based on that what should the
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character look like that matches the
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vibe of that and what kind of movements
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should they have um so for example for
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Esme because she's um meant for very
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very intimate conversations and So based
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on that the room is darker she moves bit
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slower um the way she talks is softer
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and so everything kind of matches
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together
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synergistically and when all of those
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different elements tied together and
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they all fit into a cohesive story then
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at that point the other half creation
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process is done um and then we test it
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internally and if we're happy with the
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results and we feel personally engaged
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with a character then we feel pretty
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confident that other people will also
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find them cool um and so that's really
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the at the heart of the the process on
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the technical side uh it's
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always yeah yeah I mean okay I mean I
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mean the way I'm talking about it it
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seems like a straightforward process but
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in reality it's a [ __ ] nightmare
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everything always breaks to some degree
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at some part um like the lighting is
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just doesn't it's just not working and
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then when we import the character like
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the animation is not working or like
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something it feels like it's a
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straightforward process when we're done
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with it but during the process itself
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it's always really really
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torturous yeah when you other have drops
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uh some of us will not see family for
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the next
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month yeah I mean we don't see family
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anyways but yeah exactly uh when
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mobile so this is the [ __ ] question
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of my nightmares because I get it like
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hundreds of times per
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second um which I'm really happy about I
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mean people are excited about the app
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they want to see it on mobile um so what
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I can say is that we're essentially done
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with compiling our application for
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mobile um for Android to begin with and
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later on for
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iPhones um we will hopefully release it
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for beta in the coming
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weeks um because we need to we want to
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ensure that it's up to the standard that
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people are expecting so we will start
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with a Beta release and if it does well
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um if we get positive feedback during
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the beta round then we will um hopefully
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release it through the general public
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and for that we will likely need another
00:14:01
4 to 8 weeks the primary reason is
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because we are forecasting so much
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demand for mobile that we are spending
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time to make our back end more available
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and more scalable because we won't we
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don't want to release an app and it
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blows up and it's just a shitty
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experience for everyone um so at the
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same time that we're working on mobile
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we're working really hard to make sure
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that all of our backend services are
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scalable to match the predicted demand
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so that's the end of the video I have no
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idea how to make one of these so don't
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roast me too hard and if there's
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anything else you guys want to see in
00:14:34
the future about other half please let
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me know in the comments um or if there's
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anything you want to know about my
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personal life there's really nothing
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interesting going on but if you do have
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questions I'm happy to talk about that
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too bye