Otter CEO Sam Liang unveils plans for AI avatar to represent you in meetings

Have you ever found yourself in a situation where you spend your entire workday attending meetings without accomplishing any actual work? This can result in wasted time and reduced productivity. Fortunately, a solution may be on the horizon. According to Otter CEO Sam Liang, an AI avatar could soon step in to take your place in meetings, answering questions and participating in discussions just like you would.

AI avatars in meetings

Speaking to Business Insider India, Otter CEO Sam Liang said that he often wonders if all the scheduled work meetings he attends in a day are really necessary. To mitigate this, Otter is working to develop a way for an AI avatar to take your place in the virtual room and participate in the meeting for you. The company is already working on it, and Liang says “The prototype can be made operational later this year”.

Liang said AI characters replacing people in meetings should be trained to mimic their voice data as well as their meeting notes. This would allow the avatars to talk and answer questions just like the person they represent, even at the same pace.

Liang says an AI avatar could answer 90 percent of the questions in a meeting, and the remaining 10 percent would be sent to an actual employee with a message saying, “Hey, I don’t know how to answer this question — can you help me?”

If successful, Liang says AI avatars replacing humans in meetings would improve productivity and save a lot of time. Thus, AI avatars could participate in team meetings and provide status updates, while real employees could participate in something more productive and creative – which could generate more money for the company.

However, building such AI avatars that follow meeting etiquette and carry emotional cues is very challenging, Liang said, adding that “it needs to have the data and emotional intelligence to engage in a productive way.”