June 15, 2021 – Sidekicks.ai, a new holographic AI assistant, is launching on Kickstarter, bringing to life a level of interactivity, intelligence and personalization not yet seen from an AI assistant, according to the company.
Available from USD $99 and launching June 15, 2021, Sidekicks.ai learns from a user the more they engage with it. For example, Sidekicks will learn and play the user’s favourite songs when they get home; suggest an event to fill a gap in their schedule; or, recommend new dishes to try for dinner. The Sidekicks platform can be integrated with a user’s social media profiles in order to share experiences and photos from social platforms. Furthermore, the company states that it is compatible with smart home devices, and is able to control lights, heating, kitchen appliances and more.
To ensure the AI doesn’t pick up any wrong behaviors, Sidekicks.ai also includes a layer of human inspection that the company calls “mixed intelligence”. This is to ensure that any inappropriate habits and content are filtered out, making Sidekicks.ai suitable for families and children. Sidekicks are also built with full privacy options, so that user data stays on the device, except information that users permit to complete the tasks.
Sidekicks.ai also comes with the ‘Sidekicks Exchange’, an online marketplace for approved third party applications — tested and approved by the Sidekicks team. These apps can be purchased and downloaded by other users, which the company states will mean new updates and functionality on a regular basis, including new characters, accessories, courses, languages and more.
Omar Isaac, founder and CEO of SideKicks.ai commented: “We really wanted to make an AI that people actually want to live with, creating the fun future we all dreamed about since the ‘Jetsons’. By supporting Sidekicks.ai, you’re helping us open the technology to all creatives, making it easy and accessible to use, with full privacy on your data, and an ability to sell and share your creations on our marketplace.”
Isaac continued “We have big plans for Sidekicks, with plenty of exciting features already in development for post-launch. We’re also currently speaking with media companies to bring to life their characters in an unprecedented way, as well as engaging with those in the medical profession to see how our technology can help with issues like autism, Alzheimer’s and loneliness.”
The interesting thing about Sidekicks is that it brings a visual element to the virtual assistant market by displaying its assistants as holograms. Think something along the lines of Siri, Alexa or Google Assistant, only with a face and expressions, rather than just a voice giving you a sometimes sassy or unnecessarily sarcastic response. With Sidekicks, users are able to see their assistant through one of a variety of holographic display screens offered by the company, some of which are also portable.
With the recent viral success of Samsung’s new ‘Sam’ virtual assistant concept, the Sidekicks project could be a possible indication of the direction that virtual assistants are going, with users wanting to put a face (or robot/animal/some sort of avatar) to the voice of their AI assistants in the future. Who knows – it could be that if/when Apple brings out its consumer augmented reality glasses, users might get to see Siri’s face as they converse with the AI perhaps.
Sidekicks is available to pre-order on Kickstarter. For more information on Sidekicks, please visit the company’s website.
Image / video credit: Sidekicks.ai / YouTube
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About the author
Sam is the Founder and Managing Editor of Auganix. With a background in research and report writing, he has been covering XR industry news for the past seven years.