I advise clients on Generative Artificial Intelligence, especially in creating audio-visual content to communicate with consumers. My core skill is crafting commercial content strategies, that focus on user engagement. My PhD research was multidisciplinary, involving Human-Computer Interaction, Business, Journalism, and Social Psychology. The 2024 doctoral thesis was titled: ‘Talking Heads: The use of virtual human presenters for the delivery of news content’. It explored the use of visual, photo-realistic, computer-simulated characters – also called ‘AI avatars’ or ‘digital humans’ – as interfaces between data sources and users. It centred on the delivery of news content, as this genre of information requires a high level of user engagement, especially a belief in the authority, trust, and credibility of the presenter. The lessons learned from this research are applicable to all enterprises, who want to use AI avatars (instead of text-based chatbots) as customer service agents, or as AI doctors, AI tutors, and other AI presenters.
