Avatars Are the UI of the Internet: Why Every App, Game, Corp Will Have An AI Persona ft. Akash Nigam
The AI XR Podcast.Show Notes
Akash Nigam has been building Genies since 2017 with a conviction that avatars will be the visual layer of the internet. As CEO of Genies, he's assembled IP partners including the NBA, MLB, Sanrio, and Kakao, with more major studios and agencies set to announce before the end of May. The pitch: every app, game, website, and celebrity is going to have an AI personality. Genies wants to be the framework that gives all of those personalities a face.
What separates Genies is portability and scale. A character that took eight weeks in 2021 now takes ten minutes. Staying stylized rather than photorealistic isn't just aesthetic — it's what got Hollywood to the table. Talent doesn't want deepfakes. They want a Genie: trained on private IP data, capable of one-on-one fan relationships that make Instagram feel thin.
AI XR News: Tim Cook stepped aside as Apple CEO with hardware chief John Ternus taking over. Humanoid robots ran a half marathon in Beijing while a Sony robot defeated professional table tennis players, opening a conversation about Chinese robotics capabilities and AI data infiltration risks the US is still underestimating.
Key Moments: [00:06:45] Tim Cook steps aside: what the Apple leadership transition signals about wearable AI [00:12:00] Humanoid robots and table tennis: China's robotics flex [00:13:00] The data infiltration argument: open-source risk and a warning for the US [00:24:00] The IP land grab: NBA, MLB, Sanrio, Kakao, Naver Webtoon [00:28:00] From photo to avatar in 10 minutes: how Genies' generation pipeline scaled [00:32:00] Why Instagram feels thin and how Genies enables one-on-one fan relationships [00:49:00] 80 people, $150M raised, and why Bob Iger sees Genies as the future of Disney
If AI personalities are going to be everywhere, what do they look like? Akash has been building the answer for nearly a decade. Q3 is when it goes live.
Brought to you by Zappar and Mattercraft — the leading visual development environment for immersive 3D web experiences. Mattercraft now includes an AI assistant for design, code, and debugging in real time. Start building at mattercraft.io.
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