Edward Saatchi, CEO and co-founder of Fable, an innovative company pioneering AI virtual beings, has been announced as the keynote speaker on the first morning of DATAx San Francisco on May 14, 2019.
Formerly a VR studio, Fable relaunched as an AI-based virtual beings company during Sundance Film Festival in January, as it refocused its emphasis on creating "virtual beings", also known as digital humans, which are believable human characters governed by AI.
Saatchi once described VR as the next great
artform, but its widespread acceptance by the film community has led to his
next prediction: That the next great artform is AI. With that sentiment in
mind, Fable has set an aim of creating and nurturing characters with style and
approachability in a VR setting.
Among the company's projects, Wolves in the Walls, which is based on the work by Neil Gaiman and Dave McKean, takes viewers on an interactive VR quest with an eight-year-old character named Lucy. Whispers in the Night, a follow up project to Wolves in the Walls, is a virtual beings experience during which viewers can have a conversation with virtual being Lucy.
"The new team at Fable is 50% immersive storytelling and 50% machine learning," Saatchi said. "We’ve already built that harmony between games and immersive storytelling. The next thing is about creating a new conflict and new harmony between immersive storytelling and the AI folks."
Details on Saatchi's forthcoming keynote presentation will be released next week. In the meantime, delegates can register for tickets to the event here.
Joining Saatchi on the line-up for the two-day data extravaganza are leading names from across the world of data, AI and machine learning, including Reddit director of data science and engineering Lin Huang, Twitter data scientist – team investigations tech lead Jeffrey Tang, and Wells Fargo VP and head of enterprise advanced analytics Himanshu Baral.
Among the theaters that will make up DATAx San Francisco this year, one will focus exclusively on the exciting gaming analytics field. The line-up for Gaming Analytics Summit will include key figures from PlayStation, Activision, Electronic Arts, Ubisoft and Twitch, as well as Blizzard Entertainment senior data scientist Ting Ding, whose exclusive interview with DATAx can be found in our recent ebook: DATAx Guide to Gaming Analytics.