What’s supercharging these AIs are large language models (LLMs). LLMs are language prediction tools that can read, summarize and translate text by predicting upcoming words in a sentence, allowing them to generate new text that closely resembles human speech and writing. They’re adept at both writing and interpreting text, and that cognitive ability means they can do far more than just write the first draft of an email or summarize your meeting notes.

ChatGPT, built by OpenAI, has gained incredible popularity thanks to its simple conversational interface and its ease of use. This accessibility has inspired multiple teams within Media.Monks to experiment with LLMs, and GPT in particular, to find better ways to work and create. The result is a series of prototyped innovations that demonstrate the ability of LLMs to aid in internal collaboration, streamline information gathering and self-service, and make highly technical metrics more accessible for everyone.

Enabling collaboration through multi-user experiences.

The Labs.Monks, our R&D team focused on technology and innovation, built a chatbot designed to streamline brainstorming and collaboration across teams. Charmingly named Brian (originally from an internal pun of BrAIn but renamed for simplicity), the GPT-powered bot integrates into Slack and serves as an intelligent, active participant in team channels. The idea for Brian came from the realization that most applications of ChatGPT are task-based, which inspired the team to consider other ways LLMs can support teams, like serving as a creative collaborator.

Brian has two modes. In facilitation mode, it keeps group brainstorms going by offering questions and providing summaries on the discussion. In contribution mode, Brian serves as another collaborator who thinks along with the team and adds to the discussion.

“During one of our tests, it was able to help us brainstorm a fictional brief on how to create an experiential activation for a soft drink brand catered to seniors with some interesting results! Though ultimately we ended up coming up with an idea ourselves, the input from Brian helped us get to other outcomes we might not have thought of otherwise,” says Angelica Ortiz, Senior Creative Technologist. Being able to field a discussion among a group of users (and even address individuals by name) separates Brian from other chatbots, which are typically limited to one-on-one conversations.

The team originally built Brian as an exercise to gain hands-on knowledge and experience with LLMs, the focus of their recent Labs Report. Now, the team is exploring how to roll it out as a tool for wide use by the Media.Monks team.

An alternative to fine-tuning GPT.

After seeing the potential of LLMs, many brands are exploring the idea of fine-tuning those models to better match their tone of voice or the kinds of content they create. Generally, fine-tuning an existing model can be cost-effective, removing the need to train a model, program a chatbot or write new content from scratch. But for some use cases, fine-tuning can be prohibitively expensive compared to another method of generating more brand-unique results: prompt engineering.

Our Tech Services practice developed a method of prompt engineering that makes it easy to build a GPT-powered chatbot that can answer questions based on content from a specific domain. The example they use is turning a company’s internal wiki into an assistant that saves employees the trouble of searching and sifting through long documents to find the information they need. The key technology behind this method are OpenAI’s embeddings, a feature that allows matching user queries with answers from the most relevant source content.

Embeddings unlock some incredible features. Users can ask questions and receive responses in their language of choice, regardless of the source content’s original language, meaning there’s no need to localize. They also don’t rely on exact word matches; if someone asks our hypothetical company wiki bot about “vacation time” policies, the bot will know to pull information from a document about “paid time off.” Adding more content to the chatbot is also easy, as all it takes is a simple webhook to enable the bot to answer questions about new content as its published.

If you want to learn more about how to use embeddings to prompt engineer a bot of your own, check out the full writeup. You’ll also see a video demo that walks you through how embeddings achieve each of the outcomes above.

Digesting information at speed.

Sifting through data can be overwhelming—especially if numbers aren’t your forte. That’s why our enterprise automation team developed Turing.Monk, a chatbot affectionately named after Alan Turing, the 20th century computer scientist who developed the Turing test, which tests a computer’s ability to exhibit intelligent behavior. Turing.Monk help teams quickly find the answers they need about their campaigns by answering queries in three formats: lists, summaries and graphs.

The bot functions a lot like a marketing assistant, helping marketers draw conclusions about a campaign’s performance. Want to see how the media cost has changed on a week-by-week basis? Just ask Turing.Bot to “provide a written summary of how the media cost is changing” for the campaign in question. It’s that easy.

The ability to ask questions in natural language helps puts analytics and data science at the fingertips for those on the team who might not know SQL or Python. “It’s early in development, but today an account manager can keep prompting and fine-tuning the prompt to get the outcome they desire,” says Michael Balarezo, Global VP of Enterprise Automation. “We’re now working on improving the analytical capability of the tool, leveraging the power of LLMs to understand the nuance of the ask, and translate that into more complex insight generation”

More potential has yet to be unlocked.

While much has been said about LLMs’ abilities to generate text, their skill in interpreting queries and surfacing up helpful, contextual information—all in a conversational format—will make them incredible tools in the workplace and beyond. From facilitating creative collaboration, to making information easily accessible for all, to giving people superpowers by putting digestible data at their fingertips, the potential for LLMs like GPT is great—and you can bet we’ll continue to experiment and find even more applications and use cases to benefit our team and the brands we work with.

And while various point solutions and startups have hopped onto the scene, a growing collection of enterprise solutions is offering newly accessible ways for teams to boost productivity—all within platforms they already use and trust. The generative-AI-scrawled writing on the wall is clear: there’s no better time than now to begin upskilling teams in artificial intelligence.

The rise of enterprise AI is upon us.

Enterprise AI can be divided into three categories: martech, of which many marketers are already familiar in the data and media space; general productivity and collaboration tools; and tools aiding in creativity. Let’s look at high-profile examples from the latter two categories that have only recently been revealed.

On March 14, Google announced its plans to add generative AI features to the Google Workspace suite, with Docs and Gmail being the first platforms that will make use of the new tools. This isn’t Google’s first foray into applying artificial intelligence to work; Smart Reply and Smart Compose were introduced in 2015 and 2019, respectively, to streamline email communication by recommending contextually relevance responses or auto-completing lines as they’re written in real time. 

Just a week after that announcement, Google opened up the waitlist for Bard, its chatbot alternative to ChatGPT. Unlike Workspace, Bard cannot be used with a corporate account; users must be logged into a Google account that they wholly control. Still, the application for business is significant, with Google suggesting use cases like generating blog post outlines or snappy taglines.

Just days after the Google Workspace reveal, Microsoft introduced Microsoft 365 Copilot to the world on March 16. Similar to Google’s offering, Copilot applies natural language to unlock productivity, like translating a product spec sheet into a drafted product announcement in seconds. A key feature behind Copilot is Business Chat, which works across a user’s data to surface up information and insights that are needed at a given moment. These moves come after a potential $10 billion investment in OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT and other AI innovations, following previous investments in 2019 and 2021. 

Getting creative with AI.

Like the enterprise tools mentioned above, Adobe Creative Suite is no stranger to AI; Sensei, a feature uses AI and machine learning to help users quickly make key edits to photography and design, launched in 2016.

Now, Adobe is launching Firefly, a family of generative AI models to assist in visual creation of all kinds, including still imagery, video content and 3D models. Examples include adding context-aware elements to an image you’re already working on—like speaking a castle into existence within a drawing of a beautiful landscape—or generating a whole image or design based on a sketch or a few words.

What’s interesting about Adobe Firefly is that it’s trained on images from Adobe Stock and works that are either in public domain or open license, avoiding the challenges of rights and ownership that affect models trained from content sourced across the internet.

Embrace experimentation to build AI maturity.

The rise of enterprise-ready AI is a turning point of the technology, which is now becoming even more accessible for employees looking to supercharge their productivity and creativity. But simply adopting a new technology isn’t a silver bullet that will help people work better with the click of the mouse.

Consider the paradox of choice: this phenomenon explains how when presented with more options, people expend more energy to make the right choice. Everyone has felt the paralyzing dread of a blank page waiting to be filled, and opaque platforms that rely on natural language can easily overwhelm, particularly for employees who aren’t used to issuing directives. To make the most out of these tools, then, brands will need to upskill their teams to better understand their potential and how to act on it.

Our team has been eager to embrace these tools to experiment and share that knowledge with our partners. Following a successful AI hackathon last winter to kickstart that maker’s attitude, Jam3 hosted another AI hackathon in March across its global offices, with the goal of answering the question: how can (and should) creatives in our industry use AI-powered tools? Challenged to build a brand strategy and product offering for a fictional fashion and beauty brand, each team employed AI as a sparring partner to gain an unconventional creative perspective and accelerate results. AI had to be used as a tool to generate ideas, insights, visuals, scripts and code—ultimately resulting in a campaign to launch the fictional brand and a storyboard and prototype to bring it to life. These events go a long way in helping employees envision the role that AI can play in achieving their everyday responsibilities.

Don’t wait to get started.

We’re only in the beginning of the AI-augmented workplace, but these tools and platforms are becoming increasingly sophisticated each day—meaning if you haven’t embraced AI on your team yet, you’re already falling behind. 

That’s why we put together a quick, single-page guide mapping out areas where brands can begin building their AI maturity right now, while also gearing toward future goals as technology continues to improve. Whether you’re looking to do more with less, personalize marketing on a grander scale, or something else altogether, find out how to get started with our quick guide.

For the new generation of consumers, a brand that keeps its distance on social media is not a memorable one. Quite the opposite. Audiences today have come to expect a degree of relatability—and above all, a real understanding of their interests and necessities. It’s not about keeping up with the top 10 TikTok trends; rather, about thinking and creating like consumers. 

Marketers who have a solid grasp of this are expanding their businesses and promoting their brand just as with word of mouth. But they are not doing it alone. Community managers are one of the main players in the game of hooking consumers—even if their role is often simplified and associated with junior professionals who are just starting their careers. As consumer behavior continues to evolve, we need a new approach to community management that understands its importance and allows us to harness its true power. Here’s what that looks like.

AI and automation meet an increased focus on being human.

As previously mentioned, consumers are more likely to engage with brands that demonstrate some sense of humanity. And if they are not afraid to show an actual human behind the screen, all the merrier. Community managers today are spending less time solving problems and more time sharing their own opinions, experiences and emotions—acting more as entertainers and relatable friends than customer service agents.

If we think about the spaces where consumers connect with brands, these are mostly global digital platforms with a demand for always-on interaction. One of the ways that world-class brands deal with this expectation is by hiring community managers in a bunch of different time zones so that they are manually working round the clock to serve them. However, by incorporating automation tools—such as social bots or other applications of AI—you can also offer on-demand attention and instant solutions so that the users feel supported 24/7 while CMs focus on being creative.

In other words, these tools manage all the liking, retweeting and answering of repetitive queries so that community managers can better direct their energy toward inspiring real connections with people.

On top of that, you can have fun with it. Working with the television series Atlanta, for example, we created their own custom AI bot to take over the show’s official Twitter account for a week. In a joint effort between Jam3, Cashmere and Media.Monks’ teams, we trained it on every tweet from the Atlanta handle. Then, we used Twitter’s new edit function to tease out a takeover that had communities on Reddit and Discord following along.

Web3 fosters a spirit of participation.

Many factors have pushed community managers to expand their roles, and as long as new platforms keep emerging, they’ll continue to adapt and evolve. With its values of collaboration, decentralization and power-to-the-user, Web3 is already changing the way we engage with communities, switching the focus from “talking to” to “participating with.” In that landscape, community managers will need to be quick on their feet and feel prepared to appropriately engage with consumers—whether that means communicating through a virtual avatar or even hosting an auction of NFT artwork. 

What’s more, commerce is going live—prompting brands to blend communities and real-time connection to offer entertaining interactive experiences. While influencers or digital creators are typically the stars of these events, community managers play a fundamental role in moderating and executing these activities. 

Community managers are becoming more involved in creative processes.

As virtual worlds evolve and virtualization emphasizes the spirit of collaboration, brands have an opportunity to give more thought to the role that community managers play within their team. Instead of simply asking ourselves what new platforms to join, we need to follow it up with, “What should be the purpose of the CM in each one?”

Not all brands need to have the same approach, but one thing is certain: when community managers are invited to creative rounds, campaign briefs and content calendar meetings, they are better equipped to create the kind of brand experience that social media managers and creatives are working so hard on. What’s more, they can provide unique insights they’ve gathered from interacting directly with consumers.

In a world where brands need to be active listeners and co-create culture alongside their audience, community managers are key liaisons between the two. As their role evolves, we need to get rid of the simplistic view of posting, responding and reacting—understanding that they have the power to create brand love and a direct impact on the brand experience. Let’s move away from the concept of community managers as an exclusively intern-level position and recognize the importance of elevating the role of those communicating directly with consumers.

In this report, we’ll cover everything you need to know about LLMs: what the competitive landscape looks like, how these models can be applied to your work, what changes with the release of GPT-4, and considerations for responsible use. After taking stock of the present, we’ll also look at what the future of text might look like as LLMs become more sophisticated and tailored for specific uses across industries. In addition, we’ll share our prototype built using GPT and Slack’s API that’s designed to jumpstart brainstorms among a group of collaborators.

In this report, you will learn:

• Why LLMs are so effective
• How GPT-4 changes the game
• Ways to apply this technology now
• Important considerations to keep in mind
• The upcoming impact of LLMs and how to prepare

Brian: A creative co-collaborator brainstorm bot powered by chatGPT.

To make GPT more accessible across our team and to integrate it within commonly used workflows, we created a chatbot that integrates into our widely used communication tool, Slack. Unlike typical chatbots that only engage in one-on-one conversations with users, Brian is designed to actively contribute and facilitate brainstorming sessions among teams.

Ultimately, the chatbot streamlines team brainstorming and collaboration within the Slack platform by guiding the conversation, sharing its own ideas, summarizing the discussion and more.

Indeed, the efficiencies and opportunities that AI enables can radically uplevel brand experience and output, though unlocking their true potential relies on understanding how to uplevel teams to use the technology effectively. Those who can fully leverage the power of AI and infuse it within every aspect of their business will dominate the market. But for those lagging behind, this is a Kodak moment: there will be no loyalty for businesses that are slow to deliver AI-powered experiences that make consumers’ lives easier.

Throughout this guide, we’ll showcase AI’s potential to transform marketing today and tomorrow, as well as the actions you can take right now to reap those rewards and lead in the new era.

It’s true that we’re at the peak of the hype cycle with AI, particularly generative AI. But this disruption is a significant one, one that has become a make-or-break moment for many in our industry. 

We’re not just bullish on AI; as a change agent in our industry, it makes our model inevitable. Automation has played a great role in helping us scale up our business and outmaneuver our more traditional peers since day one. Meanwhile, today’s rapid evolution of AI is reshaping the nature of the brand-agency in real time, along with how brands themselves can go to market. Winning in the new era requires a willingness to embrace all that AI has to offer.

Prior to the hype, generative AI sprung onto the scene about four years ago, and our innovation team quickly began to experiment with it by training our own models. One turned lines and doodles into foliage; another neural animation tool created original dance choreography based on simple input like stick figures. More recently, we made an entire short film with the help of AI at every step of the production process. These experimental prototypes anticipated a future in which AI would open a new world of creative possibilities—that future is now.

But AI will have other, far-reaching potential across our industry as brands set out on new paths to growth beyond just content creation; its rapid development signals the start of truly personalized digital experiences. Cookies are crumbling, and brands have taken that as a cue to recognize the people behind the numbers and provide a better value exchange for their data. Yet the tools that marketers have historically relied on have always failed to turn the ideal of 1:1 marketing across the customer journey into a reality. AI finally unlocks that ability—across content, data and digital media, and tech services—to build and deliver hyper-personalized, highly empathetic customer journeys at scale, and fast.

Some are wary of these tools, focused on the balance between augmenting human ability versus replacing it. That’s a noble and important conversation to have. But automation has always been crucial to the growth of our team, and we are confident AI will continue to lead to more and greater work for our people. As a tech-agnostic team of makers, one that has already enthusiastically adopted these tools across every part of our business, we are the best positioned to take advantage of the abundance AI enables.

There are incredible opportunities on horizon: making more with less, making marketing intelligence more intelligent, or even driving new value to intellectual property through the training of owned AI systems. Each possibility will challenge the role of a creative, data and digital media, or tech services partner to evolve—lest they be surpassed by any number of new startups and cottage industries that have cropped up designed around AI. We don’t shy away from the challenge; we’re poised and ready to lead in the disruption, because that’s what we’ve always been built to do.

Organizing content in a way that is easily navigable and actionable is crucial in developing a strong user journey—even more so for a corporate platform that exists to inform. “When it comes to companies that have so much existing content and information, how do you organize that massive number of things to say—and make it personalized and easy to find?” asks Group Creative Director Niels Dortland. The challenge lies not in representing the breadth of information available, but rather pushing users to the right content to act or purchase.

From microsites to enterprise platforms, our platforms team has worked with a wide variety of brands to implement new content management systems, design personalized journeys, and improve accessibility—and finding the right way to surface up key bits of content out of a massive library is key to each of those efforts. Here’s a look inside how the team did just that for Jacobs, an engineering company whose portfolio touches design, construction, consulting and maintenance across a wide range of industries around the world.

Overcome the homepage turf war.

What causes the content overload that is so common on corporate websites? “Everyone wants to say everything, so everything is on the menu,” says Fernanda González, Group Experience Director. That might be a welcome sight at an all-you-can-eat restaurant, but not so much when searching a website for information you need.

The maximalist approach is often the result of intra-political clashes between different business units. A company is a bundle of different teams with different goals and responsibilities, and it’s a reasonable expectation that each should be equally represented on the website. But the primary focus should be on understanding the different types of users who will visit the website and how to account for their needs. 

“What will get people to move forward, and how do we mix those things together into a good user experiences?” González asks, reasserting a user-led approach to content management. Our team’s solution: deliver dynamic content based on each individual’s needs, meaning no one is scrounging for homepage real estate.

Tap into off-the-shelf solutions to make content easily searchable.

One way to move past messy menus and overwhelming content feeds is to put search front and center, helping visitors access the content they need in just a few keystrokes and clicks. For Jacobs, we implemented an AI-powered search engine that greets visitors by asking what they’re looking for. The sophisticated language model lets users answer in plain English, rather than strings of SEO-ified keywords.

The model also made search far easier to implement than a traditional engine, as natural language processing bypassed the need to index and structure data across Jacobs’ existing content—a lengthy and meticulous process that can stretch development cycles across months. “Many other search engines on websites like this need to be very structured with keywords,” says González. “Instead of that, we implemented a smart one that learns to search for content as quick as possible.”

The team further sped up development by choosing an existing search solution, rather than build one from scratch. “Taking tech off the shelf is smarter for brands because it’s faster,” says Dortland, compared to the work of big consultancy firms who easily get tied up in assessments, planning and processes instead of execution. This resourceful method of spinning up solutions means we can make a difference to the user experience now versus a year down the line.

Not only that, off-the-shelf tools are also backed by dedicated development teams and robust documentation should the need for troubleshooting arise. And that’s just the beginning, because as users browse and search around, the platform becomes more aware of their needs, employing a feedback loop to help enhance the user experience with speedier, more accurate results.

Take a cue from social media to make content actionable.

Easily finding content is one thing, but what should users do with it once they’ve landed? “We realized that people want to save content, so we activated that in the user journey,” says González. As users browse content, they can save it to their favorites board—a lot like saving creative inspiration on Pinterest. 

“You can shape boards around different topics of interest, and this lets you use the website more as a utility to gather information,” González adds. In addition to letting users build their own boards, the platform also curates topic-specific boards that pull content from both the CMS and social platforms like LinkedIn that are always changing and always relevant to provide a unique experience for every user.

Put accessibility at users’ fingertips.

A social-inspired interface is one way to make content easily accessible to users. But platforms should also comply with Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG), which a legal requirement in many parts of the world. Accessibility works best when it plays a key role in the design of an interface—not as an afterthought—and we went beyond Level AA compliance for Jacobs by also implementing a configurator that lets each user create the optimal viewing experience for themselves.  

Options include a reading mask—which creates a focus area on the screen that follows the user’s cursor, blocking out distractions—and the ability to turn off animations and motion graphics. The result is a platform that’s not only personalized in the sense that content conforms to a user’s interest; the interface itself adjusts to their needs. Both result in a more intuitive journey across the entire Jacobs brand story.

Keep up with solutions as technology evolves.

Building a state-of-the-art platform doesn’t mean spending years reinventing the wheel. Nor does trudging through a library of legacy content to make it easy for modern visitors to search and navigate. Rather, tapping into existing, modern tech solutions can help overcome hurdles that hamper the user experience—and do it fast.

As new technologies emerge—hello, generative AI—platforms and user journeys will continue to evolve, underscoring the importance of a partner who can identify the shortest path to success among them. Remember: platforms are always evolving, meaning there’s never a shortage of options to streamline user journeys and make content more accessible.

Together with Workato—a platform we leverage to provide automation solutions to our entire enterprise—we organized a hybrid hackathon and invited parts of the company to join virtually or in-person from our Buenos Aires, San Francisco and New York City offices. The event took place in Gather.town, a 2D metaverse. The aim of the game? To use Workato and Slack to automate anything they thought would be useful for everyday Monks. The challenge was to think beyond the simple notification bot. Been there, done that. There was no limit to the technologies teams could use. The tools they built were required to be completed within eight hours. In the end, every idea was judged based on its level of creativity, visual representation, tool use, execution and overall relevance. 

Besides the many innovative solutions that came out of this event (and absolutely blew my mind by the way), I also learned another important lesson: hackathons are a fantastic way to connect people from all different corners of your organization and the world, and bring them closer together. The formula is simple: just give a group of talented people a challenging task in a tight time frame, create the right environment, and they will not only come up with incredible ideas, but also have lots of fun and build lasting friendships in the process.

Bridging together our global hub of talent.  

Each person on our rocketship diversifies our skill sets and deepens our experience—to the benefit of everyone, not just one team. Because of our integrated business model, we can stimulate people to venture outside their lane from time to time and seamlessly cross-pollinate their skills and experiences. While pitches often spur unexpected collaborations—and still result in great success, thereby confirming the power of integration—I was happily surprised to see this hackathon also highlight how easily and quickly we can connect our global hub of talent. Josh McClauss, our VP of Marketing and one of the hackathon’s judges, says that the event truly reflected the beauty of our integrated universe of talent.

Safe to say, such great talent comes with great ideas and solutions. The creativity, innovation and collaboration amongst the people that participated was outstanding, which most likely has to do with the nature of the event that brought these teams together. According to McClauss, an interactive event such as a hackathon is very well-suited to exactly the types of people that Media.Monks attracts. Why? Because of the way in which this company was built.

We may be a 9,000+ strong company, but all of our cornerstone pieces still very much carry their startup spirit. “We may have new stakeholders and constituents to build this business around, but the power in what we’re doing is still and will always be about being nimble, flexible and creative and getting together in these moments to move beyond the competition—not only because we think about things differently, but because we do them differently,” he says. It’s experiences like these that capitalize on our talent and get them excited to be here long-term as we continue to realize what the next era of a marketing services partner looks like to the world.

Fostering light bulb moments.  

Judging from all the ideas the teams came up with, I can already tell this era is looking bright. It was very exciting to see each of them bring in their unique perspective and build something that’s going to be useful to the company and our clients—both now and in the future. 

One team, for example, developed a bot that searches Slack for previously asked questions to direct users to the right answers, whereas another team leveraged Slack as an interface to interact with Open AI and create AI-driven images for ad creative prototypes. “These are tons of options that can be applied to our business immediately,” says our SVP Global Media Melissa Wisehart, who also served as a judge. Such ideas can be implemented right now to not only increase efficiencies and build better processes internally, but also deliver stronger results for clients. 

As it turns out, the way to foster out-of-the-box and solution-based thinking is by setting clear boundaries, which stimulates people to not just think, but also realize their ideas by actually building the tools that solve their everyday challenges. “This entails both the boundary of what the end vehicle is and the boundary of the time frame that you have, that’s also very important,” says our Executive Operations Manager Nicole Chanlatte, who co-organized the hackathon. “Telling people to take this time, set it aside, and dedicate it to working on a specific problem or project—that in itself should unlock new paths.” From there on, it’s a matter of building on these ideas and solutions, while seeking ways to implement them across the business right away. “I believe that if we follow through on some of these projects, the impact could be huge to both efficiency and revenue,” McClauss adds.

Cracking the code for a successful partnership.   

Ultimately, this all goes to show that hackathons are a great way to spur collaboration and spark creativity. Besides all the fun and games—yes, I did a little virtual dance while presenting on stage—the teams came up with some incredible ideas and solutions. Needless to say, the Workato team played a pivotal role in bringing this all to life, providing a helping hand in support and assisting teams new to their tool throughout the event. 

The pleasure was theirs, too, says Gaby Moran, Workato’s Director of Customer & Partner Experience. “The hackathon event was truly phenomenal and so much fun. We have a lot of customers who do hackathons and this one had some of the most creative and impactful ideas I’ve seen in a while. So many of the automations created contributed to inclusivity and collaboration—it left me inspired!” And that's what happens when you connect a diverse team of global talent around a common goal.

10. Digital humans get more realistic.

Digital humans may have earned a spot on our list of trends last year, but we haven’t grown tired of traversing the uncanny valley to play with the technology. In fact, the recent explosion of conversational AI will likely inject new life into digital humans and transform the realms of customer service, entertainment and more. Whether used to hand-craft original characters or refine scanned-in digital twins, digital human creation tools are becoming increasingly complex to deliver lifelike avatars. 

“We’ll see more competition between Unreal’s MetaHuman Creator and Unity’s Ziva,” says Geert Eichhorn, Innovation Director. In fact, Media.Monks has used Unreal’s tool to create a digital double of our APAC Chief Executive Officer, Michel de Rijk. Because why not?

9. Motion capture becomes more accessible.

Last year, we released a Labs Report dedicated to motion capture and how its increasing accessibility influenced content production for both professional film teams and everyday consumers. New technologies available at consumer price points are helping to bring motion capture into even more people’s hands. Meta’s Quest Pro headset, which released late last year, features impressive facial tracking that will be key to expressing the nuances of human emotion in VR. Move.ai, currently in beta, enables 1:1 motion tracking with a group of mobile devices—no bodysuits, no markers, no extra hardware needed. Using computer vision, the platform allows anyone to make motion capture video in any environment.

8. Mixed reality and mirror worlds mature.

With smaller and more comfortable AR headsets shown off already at CES, we can expect augmented and mixed reality to become more immersive, accessible and practical over the course of 2023 (check out more of what we saw at CES here). The VIVE Flow, for example, includes diopters so that users can replicate their prescription lenses in the device, amounting to a more comfortable experience overall. 

But it’s not just about hardware. “One of the major advancements is not in the headsets, but in the software,” says Eichhorn, noting that VPS has the power to pinpoint a user’s exact position and vantage point in the real world. “They do this positioning by comparing your camera view to a virtual, 3D version of the world, like Street View.” We covered mirror worlds in last year’s trend list, but the development of VPS is now bringing this vision closer to everyday consumers.

While VPS currently works only outdoors, we’ve already seen the power of the technology with Gorillaz performances in Times Square and Piccadilly Circus in December 2022.

7. More enterprises embrace the hybrid model.

For many businesses the return to the office hasn’t been a smooth transition; while some roles require close collaboration within a shared space, others enjoy more flexible setups that support childcare, offer privacy for focus work or greater accessibility. Given the benefits of flexible work setups and the development of technologies that build presence in virtual environments, Luis Guajardo Díaz, Creative Technologist, believes more enterprises will embrace the hybrid work model.

Media.Monks’ live broadcast team, for example, built a sophisticated network of cloud-based virtual machines hosted on AWS to enable people distributed around the world to produce live broadcasts and events. Born out of necessity during the pandemic, the workflow goes beyond bringing teams together—it’s designed to overcome some of the challenges traditional broadcast teams face on the ground, like outages or hardware malfunctions. It stands to show how hybrid models can help enhance the ways we work today.

6. Virtual production continues to impress.

Virtual production powered by real-time become popular in recent years: the beautiful environments of The Mandalorian or grungy urban landscape of The Matrix showed what was possible by integrating game engines in the production process, while pandemic lockdowns made the technology a necessity for teams who couldn’t shoot on location.

Now, further advancements in game engines and graphics processing offer a look inside the future of virtual production. Sander van der Vegte, VP Emerging Tech and R&D, points to Unreal’s Nanite, which allows for the optimization of raw 3D content in real time.

Localization of content is one example. “In 2023 we’re going to see this versatility in the localization of shoots, where one virtual production shoot can have different settings for different regions, all adapted post-shoot,” says Eichhorn.

5. TV streaming and broadcasts become more interactive.

With virtual production becoming even more powerful, TV and broadcasting will also evolve to become more interactive and immersive. “Translating live, filmed people into real-time models allows for many new creative possibilities,” says van der Vegt. “Imagine unlocking the power to be the cameraman for anything you are watching on TV.” 

It might sound like science fiction, but Sander’s vision isn’t far off. At this year’s CES, Sony demoed a platform that uses Hawk-Eye data to generate simulated sports replays. Users can freely control the virtual camera to view the action from any angle—and while not live, the demo illustrates the power of more immersive broadcasts. The technology could be a game changer for sports and televised events that let audiences feel like they’re part of the action.

4. Metaverse moves become more strategic.

“2021 was a peak hype year for the metaverse and Web3. 2022 was the year of major disillusionment,” says Javier Sancho, Project Manager. “There are plenty of reasons to believe that this was just an overinflated hype, but it’s a recurring pattern in tech history.” Indeed, a “trough of disillusionment” inevitably follows a peak in the hype cycle.

This year will challenge brands to think of where they fit within the metaverse—and how they can leverage the immersive technology to drive bottom-line value. Angelica Ortiz, Senior Creative Technologist, says the key to unlocking value in metaverse spaces is to think beyond one-time activations and instead fuel long-term customer journeys.

A great example of how brands are using Web3 in impactful ways is by transforming customer loyalty programs, like offering unique membership perks and gamified experiences. These programs reinforce how the Web3 ethos is evolving brand-customer relationships by turning consumers into active participants and collaborators.

3. Large language models keep the conversation flowing.

With so much interest in bots like ChatGPT, the Labs.Monks expect large language models (LLMs) will continue to impress as the year goes on. “Large Language Models (LLMs) are artificial intelligence tools that can read, summarize and translate texts, and generate sentences similar to how humans talk and write,” says Eichhorn. These models can hold humanlike conversations, answering complex questions and even writing programs. But these skills open a can of worms, especially in education when students can outsource their homework to a bot.

LLMs like GPT are only going to become more powerful, with GPT-4 soon to launch. But despite their impressive ability to understand and mimic human speech, inaccuracies in response still need to be worked out. “The results are not entirely trustworthy, so there’s plenty of challenges ahead,” says Eichhorn. “We expect many discussions over AI sentience this year, as the Turing Test is a measurement we’re going to leave behind.” In fact, Google’s LaMDA already triggered debates about sentience last year—so expect more to come. 

2. Generative AI paints the future of AI-assisted creativity.

If 2021 was the year of the metaverse, the breakout star of 2022 is generative AI in all its forms: creating copy, music, voiceovers and especially artwork. “Generative AI wasn’t on our list in 2022, although looking back it should have been,” says Eichhorn. “The writing was on the wall, and internally we’ve been working on machine learning and generating assets for years.” 

But while the technology has been embraced by some creatives and technologists, there’s also been some worry and pushback. “These new technologies are so disruptive that we see not only copywriters and illustrators feel threatened, but also major tech companies need to catch up to not become obsolete.” 

In response to these concerns, Ortiz anticipates a friendly middle ground where AI will be used to augment—not erase—human creativity. “With the increasing push back from artists, the industry will find strategic ways to optimize processes not cut jobs to improve workflows and let artists do more of what they love and less of what they don’t,” she says. Prior to the generative AI boom, Adobe integrated machine learning and artificial intelligence across its software with Adobe Sensei. More recently, they announced plans to sell AI-generated images on their stock photography platform.

1. The definition of “artist” or “creator” changes forever.

Perhaps the most significant trend we anticipate this year isn’t a tech trend; rather, it’s the effect that technology like generative AI and LLMs will have on artists, knowledge workers and society. 

With an abundance of AI-generated content, traditional works of art—illustrations, photographs and more—may lose some of their value. “But on the flip side, these tools let everyone become an artist, including those who were never able to create this kind of work before,” says Eichhorn. This can mean those who lack the training, sure, but it also means those with disabilities who have found particular creative fields to be inaccessible.

When everyone can be an artist, what does being an artist even mean? The new definition will lie in the skills that generative AI forces us to adopt. Working with generative AI doesn’t necessarily eliminate creative decision-making; rather, it changes what the creative process entails. New creative skills, like understanding how to prompt a generative AI for specific results, may reshape the role of the artist into something more akin to a director. 

Eichhorn compares these questions to the rise of digital cameras and Photoshop, both of which changed photography forever while making it more accessible. “The whole process will take many more years to settle in society, but we’ll likely see many discussions this year on what ‘craft’ really entails,” says Eichhorn.

That’s all, but we can expect a few surprises to emerge as the year goes on. Look out for more updates from the Labs.Monks, who regularly release reports, prototypes and podcast episodes that touch on the latest in digital tech, including some of the topics discussed above. Here’s to another year of innovation!

Since its launch in 2021, Epic Game’s MetaHuman Creator, a cloud-based app for developing digital humans, has extended its range of possibilities by adding new features—such as Mesh to MetaHuman. Using Unreal Engine, this plugin offers a new way to create a metahuman from a 3D character mesh, allowing developers to import scans of real people. In other words, it makes it easier to create a virtual double of yourself (or anyone else) almost immediately.

Inspired by this significant update and following our tradition of enhancing production workflows using Unreal Engine, our team of dedicated experts decided to build their own prototype. Needless to say, they learned a few things along the way—from the practical possibilities of metahumans to the technicalities of applying motion capture to them. As explained by the experts themselves, here’s what you need to know about creating and unlocking the full potential of virtual humans.

Be everywhere at once—at least virtually.

If you ever fantasized about cloning yourself to be able to comply with all your commitments or complete your pending tasks, metahumans may be just what you were looking for. Virtually, at least. As digital representatives of existing individuals, metahumans offer endless possibilities in terms of content creation, customer service, film and entertainment at large. Sure, they won’t be able to do your dishes—at least not yet—but if you happen to be a public figure or work with them, it’s a game changer. 

By lending likeness rights to their digital doubles, any influencer, celebrity, politician or sports superstar will be able to make simultaneous (digital) appearances and take on more commercial gigs without having to be on set. As John Paite, Chief Creative Officer of Media.Monks India, explains, “Celebrities could use their metahuman for social media posts or smaller advertising tasks that they usually wouldn’t have the availability for.” Similarly, brands collaborating with influencers and celebrities will no longer need to work around their busy schedules.

The truth is, virtual influencers are already a thing—albeit in the shape of fictional characters rather than digital doubles of existing humans. They form communities, partner with brands and are able to engage directly and simultaneously with millions of fans. Furthermore, they are not stuck in one place at a time nor do they operate under timezone constraints. In that regard, celebrities’ digital doubles combine the benefits of virtual humans with the appeal of a real person.

A new frontier of personalization and localization.

Because working with virtual humans can be more time-efficient than working with real humans, they offer valuable opportunities in terms of personalization and localization. Similarly to how we’ve been using Unreal Engine to deliver relevant creative at speed and scale, MetaHuman Creator takes localization to a new level. As Senior Designer Rika Guite says, “If a commercial features someone who is a celebrity in a specific region, for example, this technology makes it easy for the brand to replace them with someone who is better known in a different market, without having to return to set.” 

But not everything is about celebrities. Metahumans are poised to transform the educational landscape, too, as well as many others. “If you combine metahumans with AI, it becomes a powerhouse,” says Paite. “Soon enough, metahumans will be teaching personalized courses, and students will be able to access those at a lower price. We haven’t reached that level yet, but we’ll get there.”

For impeccable realism, the human touch is key.

To test how far metahumans are ready to go, our team scanned our APAC Chief Executive Officer, Michel de Rijk, using photogrammetry with Epic Games’ Reality Capture. This technique works with multiple photographs from different angles, lighting conditions and vantage points to truly capture the depth of each subject and build the base for a realistic metahuman mode. Then, we imported the geometry into MetaHuman Creator, which our 3D designers refined using the platform’s editing tools. 

“Because Mesh to Metahuman allows you to scan and import your real face, it’s much easier to create digital doubles of real people,” says our Unreal Engine Generalist Nida Arshia. That said, the input of an expert is still necessary to attain top-quality models. “Certain parts of the face, such as the mouth, can be more challenging. Some face structures are harder than others, too. If you want the metahuman to look truly realistic, it’s important to spend some time refining it.” 

Once we got our prototype as close to perfection as possible, we used FaceWare’s facial motion capture technology to unlock real-time facial animations. While FaceWare’s breadth of customization options made it our tool of choice for this particular model, different options are available depending on the budget, timeline and part of the body you want to animate. Unreal’s LiveLink, for example, offers a free version that allows you to use your phone and is easy to implement both real-time and pre-recorded applications, but focuses on facial animations only. Mocap suits with external cameras allow for full-body motion capture, but with mid-fidelity, and recording a real human in a dedicated mocap studio unlocks highly realistic animations for both face and body. 

At the same time, the environment we intend the metahuman to inhabit is worth considering, as the clothes, hair, body type and facial structure will all need to fit accordingly. Naturally, different software may adapt better to one style or another. 

While this technology is still incipient and requires some level of expertise, brands can begin to explore different ways to leverage metahumans and save time, money and resources in their content creation, customer service and entertainment efforts. Similarly, creators can start sharpening their skills and co-create alongside brands to expand the realm of possibilities. As Arshia says, “We must continue to push forward in our pursuit of realism by focusing on expanding the variety of skin tones, skin textures and features available so that we can build a future where everyone can be accurately represented.”