Exclusive Interview with Natalie Monbiot, Head of Strategy at Hour One

Virtual Humans are Artificial Intelligent Characters (AICs) trained for content-specific conversations. These characters listen, respond, and engage in dialogue with learners within interactive simulations. Hour One is an AI company specializing in the development of virtual humans for use in professional video communications. Analytics Insight has engaged in an exclusive interview with Natalie Monbiot, Head of Strategy at Hour One.

1. Kindly brief us about Hour One, its specialization, and the services that you offer.

Hour One is an AI company specializing in the development of virtual humans for use in professional video communications. We develop lifelike avatars that are based on real humans and can be animated with human expressiveness, just from text. We automate the entire production process, from studio capture to video editing and post-production to enable businesses to create video content with unprecedented ease and scale. Customers can either choose an avatar available on our platform or create a personal avatar, who can be deployed for e-learning, HR, e-commerce, SaaS, and other work-related content. Our avatars can be programmed to speak in any language, for personalized and localized communications.

2. Tell us how Hour One is contributing to the digital-human avatar industry and how you've benefited clients.

At Hour One we are building the entire infrastructure to create, manage and commercialize avatars for professional use. We've developed a simple process to create avatars, and a vast cloud infrastructure to store, manage and activate them. We've built a unique legal and commercial model that allows people to license their likenesses for use in commercial content and earn a passive income for their appearances. On the front end, we've built a self-serve platform where any business can access these avatars directly, and make videos as easily as typing in text.

We've helped clients digitally transform while keeping the human in the experience. For language learning institution Berlitz, we created 8 virtual instructors to deliver an instructor-led. In phase 1 of the program, we generated 18,000 videos, to form an on-demand language learning curriculum led by virtual instructors. This kind of scale is impossible using real humans and studio-based production – especially as this is just the start of what is required to generate courses across all levels and languages. Berlitz has so far saved an entire year of internal staffing time by switching to our solution, and we expect the dividends to increase exponentially.

3. What is the biggest USP that differentiates Hour One from competitors?

One is that we enable avatars for professional use – versus gaming or entertainment, which are the more common uses today. Second, our avatars are based on real humans, versus animation, since we aim to scale the unique benefits of human-led communication.  Thirdly, we enable avatars in video versus virtual or mixed reality, as video is the most accessible and scalable virtual medium that exists today. We don't just provide the avatar, but all the tools to create a fully edited video with immersive backgrounds and post-production effects, which we've automated within the platform.

4. How have you seen the evolution of the industry? What has changed since you first started out in the industry?

People's comfort levels with the use of virtual humans have certainly increased in the 3 years since we started. The pandemic propelled businesses into a virtual working environment and suddenly new frontiers in virtual communication became an urgent priority to stay connected. More recently, the widespread interest in all things metaverse has further normalized the concept of avatars in our lives. There are many interpretations of the metaverse but in nearly all cases avatars are implicit.

5. Where do you see growth coming in for the sector in the years ahead?

I think we will see the further normalization of human-like avatars in everyday business settings as a practical way to upgrade and scale professional communication. As people further settle into virtual and hybrid work models, they will seek ever-more effective and efficient ways to communicate and will look to virtual spokespeople, as we as to their own virtual selves for assistance.

6. What is Hour One's company and business roadmap for 2022?

We are focused on further developing our self-serve platform, Reals, for zero friction, end-to-end video production, with turnkey templates for key applications. We are also making it more seamless to become an avatar on our platform – so more people can have a virtual twin that can be programmed to deliver content on their behalf.