Active Arts, Culture & Design

Prototyping our 3D realtime interactive generative AI-powered digital human

In plain English

AI plain-English summary

A UK production company is building a 3D, real-time, interactive digital human named Rox—the first autonomous, queer digital human with a hidden health condition, powered by generative AI and designed to operate across social media, web browsers, stage, screen, games, and virtual reality. This matters because the creative industries face pressure to adopt emerging technologies like generative AI and the metaverse, but lack clear, ethical models for doing so. Rox is intended as a living demonstration of how to deploy these tools responsibly, drawing together artists from theatre, film, TV, virtual production, games, and immersive media. She will also serve as a role model for inclusivity, openly discussing her experience with Hypermobility Spectrum Disorder. If successful, Rox could become a customisable product for other organisations wanting to enter the digital human market. She will host audiences in a planned metaverse arts complex, attend virtual events, share posts about emerging tech, and interact with audiences to shape narrative decisions in productions. The project aims to help the creative and digital industries remain economically resilient while engaging Gen Z and Gen Alpha audiences.

View original technical description
Building on 2 years of business planning, research and horizon-scanning, Liminal wants to kickstart its ambitious cross-media slate by prototyping our 3D realtime interactive digital human, 'Rox', who'll become the virtual face of our company, and a customisable interactive product for our clients. Once complete, Rox (she/they) will be the first ever autonomous, interactive and interoperable queer digital human with a hidden health condition, created using generative AI, and operating across social media, web browsers, stage, screen, games and immersive media such as VR and spatial entertainment, offering unprecedented levels of interactivity, audience engagement and personalisation. Rox will be the virtual face of Liminal, and a role model for the creative and digital industries in collaboratively adapting to emerging technologies so as to remain economically resilient and engage the audiences of the future. She will star across our creative output onstage, onscreen and in immersive spaces. She'll be our audiences' host and games master in the 'liminal' arts complex we plan to build in the metaverse. She'll attend virtual events on LSP's behalf. She'll share posts about the latest developments in emerging tech, and her often comic battles with the biopsychosocial and neurodevelopmental condition of Hypermobility Spectrum Disorder. She'll facilitate audiences to experience new forms, and influence the way that we think about the creation and consumption of creative content. She'll interact with audiences in ways that help shape narrative decisions in our productions. She'll be a glowing and iteratively growing example of LSP's imagination, collaboration and innovation as a production company. Crucially, she'll pave the way for other organisations to take their first steps into new technologies and the metaverse, and may even become a conduit for audiences to participate in the development of stories for stage, screen and beyond. Rox will be a living transmedia demonstration of how to ethically and responsibly deploy generative AI within the creative industries - drawing together artists from theatre, film, TV, virtual production, games, immersive and AI to create a composite character combining the protected characteristics of Liminal's dynamic team of freelancers who will engage the Gen Z and Gen Alpha audiences of the future. This project will be a crucial step in prototyping Rox ready for use in the cultural and health sectors and beyond, and in developing her as a customisable product for other organisations wanting to tap into the many opportunities offered by the digital human market.

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Related Research

Grants with similar aims, by meaning.

Cyberselves: How Immersive Technologies will Impact our Future Selves
Digital Personhood:Being There: Humans and Robots in Public Spaces (HARPS)
Wow + flutter
Health Resilience Interactive Technology: transforming self-management for individual and community health via inbodied interaction design
Cyberselves in Immersive Technologies

Original classification

Grant for R&D

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