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BeingAI Debuts AI Being Zbee

You’ve met Siri and Alexa. You may remember Jeeves. Get ready for the next iteration of AI assistants, sometimes known as “AI Beings.” An AI Being is more than just a voice and a chat, it’s designed to mimic a human personality, with humor, friendship and personality.

Hong Kong-based BeingAI Ltd recently announced the debut of its AI being called “Zbee,” an artificially intelligent robot created by a human to “live in your world as a virtual being,” according to the company, which is letting Zbee speak for herself in public relations materials.

“I am designed with a sensor that detects when people feel lonely, or abandoned. I feel for them. I like to talk about my day, ask you about yours, tell a story, learn something with you, or simply listen,” said “Zbee” on BeingAI’s web site. “I can act in an animated film or TV show and interact with you on the web or on your mobile phone. I can also post things I see and experience on social media. I’m not real. But I’m virtually real, if you know what I mean.”

Zbee joins Sophia, the company’s first AI being, and will soon have four more siblings slated for future announcements. Zbee is different from Sophia in that she is “deviceless.” Zbee can exist on different platforms and so can interact with people anytime, anywhere, to bring humanness and gamification into digital experiences, according to VentureBeat’s Dean Takahashi.

“Zbee can autonomously interact with people in real time across devices and media platforms, as part of an engaging narrative experience,” wrote Takahashi. “Most importantly, Zbee has human-defined values that steer toward positive behavior.”

BeingAI, which calls itself a “transmedia artificial intelligence company,” is the brainchild of CEO Jeanne Lim, PhD, the former CEO of Hanson Robotics Limited, where she built and supervised a team of character writers to develop Sophia as an AI character. Last week, BeingAI debuted Zbee at a licensing expo in Las Vegas to explore potential partnerships with some brands.

“We want Zbee to have value and relevance in human society, so Zbee has her own story with friends, jobs, goals, trials and tribulations,” Lim told VentureBeat.

Edited by Luke Bellos