This Chinese 'Alexa' Is a Singing, Holographic Anime Girl

SHANGHAI—Mainland china is way ahead of us in some ways. Everybody pays for things with their phones. Trains are really fast. And if you lot want an AI banana, she's an actual animated, holographic girl named Amber.

At Mobile World Congress Shanghai I was wowed by the Gowild Holoera, a "virtual assistant" in a glowing pyramid who talks to you, answers questions, and plays music.

The Holoera isn't exactly new. Information technology was originally released in 2022, and pops up in some coverage of CES Asia 2022. It clearly hasn't burned up the market, probably because at $551 (3680 Chinese Yuan, at a shopping mall in Shanghai) information technology's an expensive product for what it does.

Chinese Holoera Idol Girl Amber

Only oh, information technology's so absurd. Nobody at the Gowild booth spoke English, and all of Amber's documentation is in Chinese. A Chinese-speaking friend of mine said Amber will greet you, chat with you lot, sing to you, society y'all food, play music, help kids acquire their Mandarin tones, and tell jokes to cheer you lot upwardly.

In the demo I saw, Amber chatted with passersby, took a nap in a bed, and when asked to play music, put on headphones and sabbatum dorsum in a lounge chair while the Holoera acted similar an Echo speaker.

Amber has besides popped up as a full-size "virtual idol" singing in concerts with the Chinese pop duo Yu Quan. Virtual idols are computer-generated singers, such equally Hatsune Miku from Japan.

Perhaps Amber is a little as well man, though—or a fiddling too superhuman. Gowild now seems to be focusing on Xiao Bai, a cute piffling robot that uses a lot of the aforementioned AI conversation-based technology as Amber does, but is an ambrosial sexless hulk.