NTT COM LAUNCHES INITIATIVES INVOLVING DIGITAL HUMANS, METAVERSE

KUALA LUMPUR, March 20 (Bernama) -- NTT Communications Corporation (NTT Com) has announced its immediate launch of initiatives involving digital humans and the metaverse under its business co-creation programme, "OPEN HUB for Smart World”.

With the launch, the company aims to expand opportunities for all people, including those with workplace or time challenges, and strengthen solutions to address issues such as Japan's declining labour force.

According to NTT Com in a statement, OPEN HUB which was launched in October 2021, has been used by some 3,000 people in about 1,300 companies for business co-creation in real and remote environments.

Established in the metaverse, OPEN HUB Virtual Park utilises a human-like "digital catalyst" generated by digital human technologies, including three-dimensional computer graphics (3DCG) and high-definition scanning and motion capture, to create a photorealistic human figure responding to human visitors.

The initiative is one of many ways NTT Com aims to use the metaverse to innovate workstyles, create new customer contact points accessible to all, and to develop services that address problems such as Japan's labour shortage and improve productivity, ultimately for greater wellbeing in society.

The OPEN HUB currently has 400 internal and external specialists, real people called catalysts, that companies utilise for business co-creation.

The newest catalyst which is a digital catalyst named CONN, was created by combining human-like visuals generated by Toei Zukun Laboratory of Toei Corporation's Digital Human Technology with human-like personalities generated by NTT's Human Informatics Laboratories' body motion-generation artificial intelligence (AI) technology and voice-synthesis generation AI technology.

The OPEN HUB Virtual Park will also serve as an environment that transcends the limits of space and distance. By utilising the NTT XR Space WEB "DOOR" metaverse platform, community members will be able to interact with each other and engage in discussions with the digital catalyst on an ongoing basis.

Going forward, NTT Com will work to match catalysts and community members based on communication logs, action logs, visitation histories and other data obtained in real and virtual environments.

-- BERNAMA