As one of the latest released AI apps Call Annie AI is aimed to perform as a ChatGPT video chat feature, the introduction of the most recent advancements in artificial intelligence has made talking to a virtual human at any moment of the day a possibility.
One AI-powered chatbot that offers users a virtual assistant who is always available is Call Annie AI.
“Whether you’re walking, driving, or just chilling at home, I’m here in the app to act as your (kind of) super-intelligent AI friend”, reads the description on Apple’s App Store.
Call Annie AI is here to serve as a Chat-GPT video chat feature
It can be entertaining to join a videoconference as your virtual self. Apple allows you to use Memojis during FaceTime to accomplish this. Avatarify will transform into Albert Einstein or the Mona Lisa for Zoom calls if you want something more ambitious on a different platform.
What if, though, you could make an AI discussion come to life? How about by having ChatGPT converse with OpenAI’s AI as if they were a CGI human on a video chat with you? If you would be interested in the scenarios how a personified conversation with the AI can go rogue, take a look at how bad can AI be, according to Hollywood.
To your surprise, conversing with such an AI is now possible. With the help of the software Call Annie AI, ChatGPT may now talk to Annie, a talking female avatar who doesn’t have a shaky visual interface. Constructed by Animato.Ai, the software is now only available on iOS 16, but it is also compatible with macOS 13 systems powered by M-series processors.
How good is the Call Annie AI?
The development of “Annie” is stunning—and a little unsettling—in the world of virtual assistants.
The app’s response time was described as “very fast” by computer expert Chris Frantz in a video that was released on Twitter.
Meet Annie, your new best AI friend and super intelligent (kind of 😅) assistant.
Whether you're walking, driving, or just chilling at home, you can have a real-time video conversation with her from the CallAnnie app.
Download link on https://t.co/EIbZSzH2QX pic.twitter.com/6Uy2UYDqZd
— Jake Dahn (@jakedahn) April 26, 2023
“I just had a FaceTime call with a near real-time ChatGPT-powered AI avatar and it was … surprisingly human,” he recently posted.
Frantz speaks with Annie about a variety of subjects, including beach vacations, food, and even how the chatbot “lived” in Florence, Italy, during her “college years”.
The virtual assistant responds as Frantz tells Annie about a recent vacation at an Airbnb: “That sounds like a perfect vacation to me. Sometimes it’s just nice to relax and unwind.”
Frantz is shocked to find that Annie, the chatbot, enjoys Italian food because she “studied art and engineering in Florence” when she is asked what kind of food she prefers. An “amazing experience” is how she describes it.
According to the developers of the software, conversing with Annie “face-to-face in real time feels more natural and faster than typing and reading text.” The social media examples of video call interfaces that we have seen thus far, like the one above, present a reasonably convincing user experience.
Despite the robotic voice and the need for improvement in the sentence pauses, Annie currently seems to be rather adept at carrying on a conversation. However, the responses are what you would often receive when texting back and forth with ChatGPT. Call Annie AI encounters can seem much more natural if given enough time and better voice training.
All of this reminds users of the sci-fi movie Her, in which Joaquin Phoenix’s character develops a romantic relationship with an AI. On Reddit, a user questioned whether Annie could have a “memory” system that would make it into a smarter “friend“, and the app makers responded, “soon.”
Annie has a bright future
The program occasionally mispronounces words, but once rectified, users who have used it report that it also quickly learns. As one user put it, this was “scary stuff“. The engineers are working on fixing another issue it has with the pronunciation of words in languages other than English.
The app’s creators claim that because of ChatGPT’s advanced capabilities, you may use it to assist you with a wide range of tasks, from learning and web searches to acting as a tour guide or even a virtual companion.
Although Call Annie AI is based on ChatGPT (and its extensive data training model), you can have a much deeper and fact-driven conversation with Annie. We don’t know if it’s as intelligent as other virtual partner applications like Replika.
Although Animato’s App Store description states that the AI keeps all conversations “confidential“, it doesn’t elaborate on the security precautions that have been taken or whether the user conversations are used to train and improve Call Annie AI’s systems.
However, the app’s developers note in the same Reddit discussion that only the “transcription is saved/forwarded to ChatGPT to get all the dialogue”, not any voice recordings. The creator further emphasizes that no data is sold to outside parties and that users can delete their web search history from the app at any time.
The team responds that a web browser cannot effectively utilize the capabilities of a dedicated on-device neural engine or any other machine learning technology, which is why there isn’t a web version of the app. In a word, it’s a performance restriction that, for the time being, can only be met natively through an app.
The older Samantha project, which allows you to have an audio call with one such AI named Samatha, appears to be Call Annie AI’s successor. Some Call Annie users claim that the ChatGPT-powered avatar argues that Samantha, not Annie, is its real name. The creators promise that it will be fixed quickly.
The app’s Settings section allows you to save the AI’s number after installation. From Animato’s official Discord channel, users can access the Call Annie AI TestFlight program to try out the more sophisticated features.
