The technology is not specific. Many companies offer life-size hologram displays for events and parties, including everything from floating 3D displays of Santa’s sleigh or 3D holo-trucks. Physicist Dennis Gabor also won a Nobel Prize in 1971 for his work that led to holography, even if the life-size Elon Musk probably isn’t the outcome he (or anyone) had in mind.
What sets Alias apart is the company’s focus on history and education, which the company describes as “ultra character creation.” The company focuses on animating deceased notable personalities into real-feeling conversational holograms, designed for conversation rather than spectacle. Alias’ holograms can juggle, do squats or even breakdance, making your party, exhibition or any event an extra special occasion.
man in the Box
Video: Dulcie Godfrey
Aelias offers pricing upon request, with costs depending on whether customers choose the rental option, purchase, or whether you are seeking special characters and activations. When I visited the offices, director Adrian Broadway noted that the minimum week’s rent would be in the thousands of pounds, including software subscription costs, delivery and installation.
Alias’s current roster has over 70 characters that can be staged in their special boxes, including Henry VIII, Beethoven, Julius Caesar, and a suspiciously sexy Cleopatra. It’s no coincidence that these are mostly historical figures – Broadway describes these boxes as great for educational settings or museum exhibitions, but admits it also has to do with copyright restrictions on the characters.
In the United Kingdom, the use of one’s identity for commercial purposes is considered a trademark. (In the United States, the right of publicity is protected in some form in most states.) That is to say, if Ellis used a famous or living celebrity, the company would likely have to go to court. But it’s unlikely to cause trouble for a long-dead historical figure like Henry VIII.
In this example, Elias had cleared up copyright concerns for Albert Einstein, a 7-foot-tall AI, so after pressing the Start Chat button, I talked to Einstein about a range of topics from science to music to his thoughts on Elon Musk. His German accent was pleasant, soft and I was impressed by the speed of response. Elias says each avatar takes less than two seconds to respond, which sounds about right.
Photograph: Dulcie Godfrey
For an educational hologram, I often find myself answering more questions than I was asking. There were times when Einstein felt like a big, animated chatGPT conversation, but with a German accent. This is to be expected, as Alias relies on open source AI and third-party generative video to create conversations. But authenticity doesn’t matter anyway, because Einstein wasn’t actually 7 feet tall. I took the opportunity to ask like an 11-year-old boy, “Who would win in a fight, you or Isaac Newton?”
It persisted, like any AI language model, and went back to its area of expertise, deciding on a sensible thing to say, “This will be a battle of ideas.” That’s as far as I went, with the aim of being at least semi-professional. But I think the language model will perform well with most things a pre-teen might put into it.
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