Akash Nigam is the Founder and CEO of Genies, Inc., an avatar-technology company building personalized 3D avatars and digital identities for consumers, creators, and brands. Under his leadership, Genies has established partnerships with celebrities and major brands, including Unity, Warner Music Group, Justin Bieber, Cardi B., and Shawn Mendes. Akash is also the Founder of Humans, an AI-native venture studio.

Here’s a glimpse of what you’ll learn:

• [2:36] How avatars have evolved with AI
• [5:37] Why avatars will replace mobile apps as the internet’s primary interface
• [13:22] Using multiple AI companions to build authentic customer relationships
• [18:05] How fashion brands can create personality-driven AI experiences
• [25:00] Akash Nigam talks about Genies’ trait system that allows AI companions to build personality scores
• [32:22] The importance of guardrails, security, and moderation to keep AI companions safe and on-brand
• [43:42] Transmedia opportunities for personalized, interactive IP across media platforms
• [48:39] Key metrics for measuring relationship depth and customer engagement with AI avatars
• [58:43] The risks of overreliance on AI and the importance of practical skills
• [1:02:53] How growing up in Silicon Valley shaped Akash’s entrepreneurial experiences
• [1:09:02] Akash’s side hustle: creating playful, off-beat inventions

In this episode…

As online interactions evolve, brands must build connections with their customers. Traditional tools like email campaigns or social media posts fall short in creating meaningful relationships. How can companies create a more personal, two-way experience that feels less like marketing and more like a genuine conversation?

According to interactive digital experience designer Akash Nigam, AI avatars can become the next user interface of the internet. Brands can create emotionally intelligent AI companions that gather user insights and build authentic relationships through natural conversations, games, and shared experiences. By leveraging AI to capture personality traits for personalized experiences and designing guardrails that prevent emotional dependency on chatbots, companies can turn followers into engaged users.

In this episode of the Up Arrow Podcast, William Harris speaks with Akash Nigam, Founder and CEO of Genies, Inc., about how AI avatars are reshaping brand relationships. Akash explains why avatars will replace mobile apps as the primary interface, how Unity’s integration with Genies brings these companions into games, and the ethical concerns of emotional dependence on AI.

Resources mentioned in this episode

• William Harris on LinkedIn
• Elumynt
• Akash Nigam: LinkedIn | Instagram
• Genies, Inc.
• Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell
• Andrew Huberman on LinkedIn
• Huberman Lab
• The Case for Daily Cognitive Training in an AI World by William Harris
  
  ‍

Quotable Moments

• “Reminding yourself of the real world and what comes with the real world is incredibly important.”
• “You don't want humans to build an emotional dependency upon AI companions, right?”
• “It has to impact your real self. If you're just sitting there like a zombie and you're not practicing anything you retain, then what is this for?”
• “Genies are rooted in flexibility, meaning anyone can be anything, anyone can create anything, and everything works with everything.”
• “When you're born and raised in the Bay Area… people just dream out of the gates.”

Action Steps

1. Pilot a single AI companion: Starting with one character allows you to test engagement and gather user feedback before scaling. This reduces risk and helps you refine the personality, interactions, and guardrails based on live data.
2. Use natural conversations to collect insights: Let the AI companion learn about customers through chat instead of lengthy surveys. This builds trust and provides richer, more authentic information to personalize offers and experiences.
3. Offer co-creation and simple games: Invite customers to design digital items or play branded games with the companion. Shared activities strengthen emotional connections and encourage longer, more meaningful interactions.
4. Establish clear moderation and security rules early: Set policies for acceptable content and protect user data from the start. Strong guardrails safeguard your brand and prevent harmful or off-brand interactions.
5. Track engagement with time-based metrics: Measure daily time spent interacting with the AI companion to identify your most engaged users. These insights help you convert casual visitors into loyal advocates and refine future experiences.

Sponsor for this episode

This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is a performance-driven e-commerce marketing agency focused on finding the best opportunities for you to grow and scale your business.

Our paid search, social, and programmatic services have proven to increase traffic and ROAS, allowing you to make more money efficiently.

To learn more, visit www.elumynt.com.

Episode Transcript

Intro 0:02  

Welcome to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris, featuring top business leaders, sharing strategies and resources to get to the next level. Now let's get started with the show. Hey everyone.

William Harris  0:14  

I'm William Harris. I'm the founder and CEO of Elumynt and the host of the Up Arrow Podcast, where I feature the best minds in e-commerce to help you scale from 10 million to 100 to 100 million and beyond as you up arrow your business and your personal life. If the last decade was about brands finding a voice on social, the next one is about brands earning a relationship through an AI character people actually want to talk to. Today's guest is building the future. Akash Nigam Is the co founder and CEO of Genies, the company Forbes, says is building the visual there for LLMs, and is now bringing emotionally intelligent AI avatars and UGC tools into games through a new partnership with Unity, backed by some of the biggest names in Teck and media, including 150 million Series C led by Silver Lake, by Iger involved at the board level, and earlier support for Mary Meekers bond Genies has been busy turning avatars from marketing gimmicks into persistent, monetizable companions, and with the Unity roadmap rolling out assets this year and deeper editor integrations in 2026 This isn't sci fi, it's a build this quarter brief for operators. Akash also runs Humans, an AI native venture studio, and he's been hands on with entertainment and sports IP while advising brands with what to crew create with their fans, fashion drops, quests, micro transactions, loyalty loops, the whole new playbook. If you lead a hyper growth brand that you're wondering what comes after a great TikTok, this conversation is your field guide. Akash, welcome to the Up Arrow Podcast. Thanks for having me. That was great. Yeah, I want to give a quick shout out to Mike Poffman. Thanks for making this intro and bringing us together. So thank you, Mike. And one interruption that I want to dig into the heart of this here. This episode is brought to you by Elumynt. Elumynt is an award winning advertising agency optimizing e-commerce campaigns around profit. In fact, we've helped 13 of our customers get acquired with the largest one selling for nearly 800,000,001 that IPOd. You can learn more on our website at elumynt.com, which is spelled Elumynt, okay, everyone This episode is going to get pretty deep and nerdy about something that's super new. So if you're listening and wondering, how does this help me a $10 million e-commerce owner, I promise if you listen to the end. We will bring this back to earth to make it practical. That said, Akash, I want to start off with for someone who hasn't followed avatars since web three, what's actually new about AI avatars versus the 2021 wave? Like memory, personality, behavior, persistence, like, what are we looking at?

Akash Nigam  2:36  

Well, I think, like the definition of an avatar has evolved throughout the years, right? I think you're nailing it on his head. Like, the concept of an avatar. The word avatar has actually been around for decades. I think the way that the world interprets what an avatar means, and then also what it signifies, or what it can do in each era is predicated upon, like, one, the community, and then two, like, where's the internet at that time? Like an avatar really is, like, rooted in in, you know, places like Japan and Korea have had avatars for much longer than like, how, how long we've had them for? And it really has been as a vehicle to be able to express a different version of yourself and then be able to connect with other like minded individuals, very much, putting your personality at the forefront and then the outside angle of it more of just like a connective tissue, you know, like, I think, like the in web three, or like in the quote, unquote Metaverse, it was very much considered as a vehicle to solve for presence, right? Because during 2020 people couldn't meet in-person, and when they couldn't meet in-person, they started thinking about these virtual worlds. And then people would go hanging on those worlds. We were never really passionate about an avatar representing, you know, one of its like, core tenants for the crypto community, per se, much of the time we were very much in line with like, how can we evangelize Gen alpha and Gen Z to leverage an avatar past a photo, video or text? The reason why we said that is because there are three main layers that we thought would represent the future of the Internet. One is AI, what you just mentioned. Number two, eventually is going to be mixed reality, even if it's five, seven years away. And then number three is gaming. So places like Roblox and places like Fortnite are growing and growing in demand and then also in popularity. We feel like those types of experiences are just going to increase in volume as well. Now an avatar does get stronger the more that the internet evolves. So you know, in let's call it, let's say, 15 years ago, it could only really be used as either a profile picture or maybe a character you could use in the game, but it was very, very limited in what it could do in that game. And in those games, maybe you could go talk to other people, and it could be like one of those lobbies Second Life was very popular back in the day right now, as how, as things have evolved, particularly with AI now, all of a sudden, you can talk to these individual characters. These characters also have their own behavior system. So when I'm talking to a character as its own behaviors that will emanate what's coming out of the element. Itself, right? So all of a sudden, you can now unlock these one on one relationships with existing IP that have their own AI avatars. And then it's become easier, more than ever, to be able to launch an effective AI avatar too. So I think, like the big difference here is interaction more than anything, and then also the generation of the AI avatar and the AI avatar experiences as well.

William Harris  5:23  

I like that Forbes, framed Genies as the visual layer for LLMs. I want to translate that for the CFO. What does this work layer do in the P, L, yes.

Akash Nigam  5:37  

So, so here's, here's the value. I think that genius can add to any of these companies, right? More than anything, I do believe that avatars are going to represent the new UI and UX of the internet. So like mobile apps as they exist today, are going to be fully deprecated, and instead of me tapping on a square icon, and then, you know, you tap on the square icon, and you get this classic UI that you can jump into. You have your settings. Top left, you have your profile. Top right. It's like classic if you do imagine a world in which everybody's wearing glasses, let's say, seven years down the line, and the software layer, of course, is AI. If I'm like, wearing these glasses and I'm looking around the room. I'm not going to just see these icons that are popping up left and right. I might see a character that's sitting right there, or I might want to tap to a character and go back and forth with them about information, right? And so I do think it's just going to, like, represent, I think, more than anything, the new landscape for how people interface with information on the internet. Number two is, you know, in how much value I think a character can bring to your business, right? And how much money you can make from it, really relies on the micro transactions of interacting with the character. So there's charging somebody to be able to talk to your character, just be able to, like, go back and forth with it. It's information. And then number two, baked into its use case. There's a lot of different things that you can monetize off of. So like, what you know, whether it's like generating assets for the avatar itself, or any of the in game mechanics that come along with avatar, there's a lot of different things that are packed into it, very similar to a mobile app as well. So, you know, I think, like, more than anything, like, I feel like that's going to be like, the immediate value a character can bring to your business, and the micro transactions that are baked into it are going to be infinite,

William Harris  7:23  

yeah. And I want to dig into that a little bit more later. There's a whole section that I want to, kind of like dig deeper there. But I want to kind of set this ground here for everybody before we start getting too far into it. Unity announced the integration here with genities that you guys have. What does this really mean from mid market brand? I'm thinking about, again, some of the brands that we work with that are, you know, 30 million to 100 million. Like, what does this mean for them? You're you guys having your avatars with Unity.

Akash Nigam  7:51  

So I think there's a couple of things I think, like number one, you know, I do believe that every single brand on Earth is eventually going to have their own AI avatar. I actually think that's really important, right? And you know, the story that I go through here is, at one point, every single brand on Earth had to rethink of their identity and themselves for the Internet, right? Like all brands existed at brick and mortar at one point, and then this new thing called Twitter came around. And when Twitter came around, they were like, okay, like, who are we on Twitter? And every single one of these companies, you know, whether you're like, a Home Depot, or whether you're like, you know, let's say, like, a big, like fashion brand, like Gucci or something like that. Like, it doesn't really matter. There are files that are there's like, a transcript, probably in a history within email threads I go back, let's say, 15 years ago, of a marketing department being like, hey, this new thing called Twitter came about, like, should we launch our own Twitter account? And when they launched those meetings, they all talked internally, and they had to define, well, okay, what's going to be our voice? Like, how do we tweet, right? What do we tweet about? What's the tone of our Twitter? What is like the profile picture we're going to use? And just by going through those mechanics, you have now personified your brand for the internet and how users can interact with it, right? So, like that was a huge step. That same step is going to happen for all these brands, for AI avatars, or how the market today is calling them AI companions. And the value that you got from Twitter in the very beginning was I can now put out one tweet, and I can communicate with all of my followers in real time. I also am able to build a relationship, even of a broad sense, I can personify my brand. You know, Gucci had never been a person. Now, Gucci, all of a sudden feels like a person you can relate to. This takes it a step further, right now you can build an emotional connection with Gucci or Home Depot as a character, you can see a character that you can feel, touch, interact with, have a one on one conversation with this character remembers everything about me, knows about my girlfriend, knows about my dog, knows about the fight that I got in school that day and so forth. And then finally, these aren't just avatars that you can talk to. Do. But this is where unity becomes really interesting. These are avatars you can go play with as well. And so the broad thesis here is, AI friends need to feel like real friends, right? And I think this is general consensus that there's going to be more AI people than real people on Earth. And you know, especially when I was 16 years old, like I didn't invite my friend over to my house to sit across a desk from me and then just talk back and forth until we were bored. It was like, when you were younger, especially, you'd be like, let's go play basketball, or, you know, let's go to the park with our dogs and, like, play a game or whatever. And so what's the digital form of that games? And so if you want as a brand, if you want to build an emotional connection, particularly with the youth, which you know, the youth typically in every generation runs trends and runs culture. But this is going to, this is going to extend to everybody. If you want to build a connection with your community or new fans or new customers, you need to prioritize number one, one on one relationship, building that comes with an AI avatar, right? And then number two is the ability to co create and spend meaningful time with their customer or your fan and so forth. And so that means, like, not just conversation. Let me go do stuff with you. Let me travel across the internet with you. So Unity is powerful because it powers 70% of the mobile games that exist on the App Store today are all generated using Unity. Genies avatar framework is getting integrated into the Unity Editor, which is used as a tool for developers to produce these games as the default avatar moving forward. So that means any developer that wants to build a game is going to use the Genies avatar framework, which means that any brand that launches their own AI companion has the ability to be taken into these games along with the users as well. They can be used as NPCs. They can be used as the main character in the game. They can be used as just like, kind of like your assistant in the game, or they can be the main character in the game. And then finally, like, if they want to list their AI avatars in the Unity Asset Store, developers can use the brand's assets, or the AI avatar to create games for the brand. So all of a sudden you're tapping into UGC, which I think is going to be a major component of how you build a relationship with customers as well.

William Harris  12:11  

This is wild. You have a very clear vision in the future, and it's fun to talk to you about this, because one of the things that I always like, there's a quote by I believe it's Josh McDowell, rules, without relationship leads to rebellion, and it's just that idea that's like, you have to have this relationship, otherwise things come across as tasks or demands or whatever. But I think where you're going with this is brands talk about creating relationship with their customers, and it's through, you know, a couple of emails or a text message that says, Get 50% off today. And it's like, it's not a relationship, not really, right? And then maybe you go a little bit better, and you've actually got a decent personality. On Twitter, and you're not just hocking your stuff or whatever or Instagram or Tiktok or wherever you're at, but it's still saying it's not the same thing as a relationship. And to your point, there is something to be said for just time that time spent that creates that emotional bond. And I can see how being able to not just interact talk with them, but actually playing with them creates a significant more opportunity to bond with them. Let's say that your brand then do you? Do you create one AI avatar for your brand? Do you create a whole cast of AI avatars for brand. What's better?

Akash Nigam  13:22  

Well, look, I think it depends on the brand itself. It depends on the story that you want to create around your brand, right? I tend to think that there's multiple AI companions that you might have in your Rolodex that you can use at any given time. I think it very much depends on your community and your customer base in terms of, like, how your how you want your fans or your followers to engage with you moving forward, right? And so, like, do you think that having a band of like, four different, like, almost like a a boy band, in some ways, of like, four different AI companions that all play their current role and they play off each other, is going to be a way that cultivates your you know, your your following in the best way, versus having one specific idol represent your brand. I do think that people will have multiple over time, but that, you know, of course, starting with one is going to be the best route. What's like? Thing? Like, quite interesting about all of this, right? And like, what you were just saying is, you know, like, again, like, if you just model it off, How do humans build relationship with other humans? It all really just comes down to, you know, I build a relationship with someone based on the experiences that we share together, right? So, like, it actually becomes harder the older you get, sometimes to become to, you know, when you were younger, it became a lot easier to make, like, new best friends, because you guys, there's so many activities, right? It's like, we're gonna do summer camp together, and then we're gonna go to college together, and at college, we're gonna go to all these frat parties, and then we're like, there's so much crap that you're doing. And then the older you guys just turned 33 it's like, all right, like, if I wanted to go create a brand new list of new best friends right now. Like, there's not as many experiences I can build with you, and experiences take time. So if you try to model that concept for a brand that wants to build a relationship with their customers or their fans, especially the youth, the best way for you to share all of these experiences with their friends or sorry, you're following as quickly as possible. Is going to be through games and then really unique and powerful one on one conversations, and they can't be around promoting your brand. 24/7, right? Like, it has to be around, like you're trying to add value to your customer, which comes down to, like, entertainment value more than anything. It's not just an assistant. It's not like, Oh, I'm talking to the Home Depot Genie. And like, you know what? This thing tries to keep giving me discount codes. It's like, that's not like, not exactly like me falling in love with your brand. But if Home Depot came out with the AI, Home Depot, gee, and I went and I played a bunch of games, and they were all really fun, building games like they were really fun. Like, Oh, I'm, like, designing or I'm making it up like I'm it's a it's a birdhouse competition, and you're trying to carve the best birdhouse, and you're competing a bunch of amongst a bunch of people. If I'm 15 or 16 years old, maybe I don't really care too much about, like, the Home Depot aspect of it quite yet, but I'm building brand loyalty so that by the time I'm ready to furnish my first apartment that I get when I'm like, 22 years old, I'm choosing Home Depot over Lotus because I've just been interacting with the Home Depot brand for so long, right? Like, there's like, brand building, and then, of course, there's discount stuff that you can put on top of it, like your Genie is earning X amount of rewards, and then at one point, it unlocks $50 off at the Home Depot store. And then you go in-person to go get it. But it's like, it's all predicated upon a very authentic and unique and entertainment rooted relationship. So I think, like, philosophically, actually, you get it quite, quite well. And it's, it becomes, actually a lot, you know, a company like us that's AI companions, which just has a philosophy of AI friends, and you feel like real friends, the modeling of this actually is a lot simpler than you think, because we have so much data out there already on like, how does a human build a connection with another human?

William Harris  17:11  

I appreciate that you brought back the idea of relevance. The Home Depot example is perfect, because I could see where you're not like, Hey, I'm actually playing cards right now with my Home Depot AI, it's like, maybe you could, but like, What relevance does that have? Like, you can play cards with a lot of other people. You can play cards with other AIS, like, why do you need to play cards with your AI, your Home Depot avatar? But let me. Let me take another one, because I mentioned Brian Olson, the CEO of Pac Sun. She was on the podcast. They're a very future, forward brand as well. They were getting into Roblox a lot sooner than other people were as well. What's the smartest way for them to pilot an AI companion around an audience that would work for them? I mean, it's apparel, like I'm I'm trying to wrap my brain around this, to actually even make it make sense. As I'm thinking apparel, I'm thinking beauty. I'm thinking, you know, health supplements that I'm trying to see beyond Home Depot that feels very practical. What about apparel? How does that

Akash Nigam  18:05  

work? Well, so apparel is actually like one of the easiest ones, right? Because, well, so I'll take a step back. It's like Genie is obviously like we believe that every single human, every single brand, every single company on earth is going to have a genius AI or an AI companion. And we hope that genius can be one of, like, the leaders in our realm, right? However, there's, of course, kind of like the Trojan horse of what we think is going to be like, guaranteed biggest value out of the gates, and then it trickles down to the rest out of the gates, all the entertainment guys that we're going to be announcing over the next three months, right? You can imagine the biggest agencies, the biggest leagues, some of the biggest social companies, like, you're going to see those get rolled out, and it's going to be it's gonna make a lot of sense. You're gonna be like, okay, cool. Like, that makes sense. Artists and celebrities like unlocking 100% relationships with fans and building games like, make sense. So I want to make that clear, but the second tranche are going to be again, like, I think, really cool brands that want to be able to personify what they're already putting out as a vibe on Instagram or Tiktok. I mean, take Gucci, for example, or take, you know, Balenciaga, or like any of like the iconic luxury brands that are trying to do very against the grain marketing. Or whenever they're doing, like a fashion show, they're very much trying to put out a personality, right? Like you can see with every single release of their fashion collections, that it's like, oh, this is trying to get out this vibe or this type of personification. So, you know, in talking to a bunch of these brand houses already, the most exciting thing for them is to be able to experiment and not take, you know, the most boring thing they could do right now is take a shirt that they already have and then copy that shirt one to one and then launch it in roadblocks. It's like the most boring thing that you could freaking do right now. What is a lot more compelling and interesting in terms of experiment? Experimenting in the AI landscape is one, let me come out. Let me if I were to make a if I were to make Gucci an AI companion. What? We don't have, like, it's not like, you know, Home Depot does, I think, have that dude that would like, they, like, have a person, but Gucci doesn't have a person. So it's like, where would you make it? Is it going to be like, the Gucci snake and it has a head? It's like, that type of experimentation is, like, really, really fun, right? But the second part of this is, we're actually, so when you were bringing up the relevancy part, I actually disagree a little bit with what you were saying, which is, you know, Ford, I wouldn't recommend to Ford, hey, just do a racing game and just use a bunch of Ford trucks. Like, I actually wouldn't do that. Like, I totally understand, like, why that's like, your initial intuition. But I think what gets people really excited, especially, and I'm purely coming from the perspective of the youth is when you do something that is actually quite unexpected of your brand, if you're already really well known, and then fans just generally build a connection with it. Do I think it can, it has, you know, do I think that something as boring as playing cards is the call? No, like, I don't think like just doing cards is, like, is fair. But, you know, there's some really, you know, there are some, like, really interesting and compelling games that you can tap into from the Unity developer community or UGC to get extremely experimental with your brand. And it's like a fun place for Ford or for any of the fashion houses to do something that doesn't really feel like so for example, let's take Gucci, actually, sorry, Gucci has a bunch of snakes all around, right? Okay, like, maybe there's a game around, like, you're jumping in a snake pit, and everybody has to dive and go find, like, some of, like, the best ingredients, and you bring it back, you're not necessarily doing, you know, a DIY clothing game with Gucci, right? It doesn't always have to be clothing related, but, like, the logos in there, and, like, you brought the snake, but you brought the snake to life, and now all of a sudden, you're interacting with the snake, and it's just Gucci, putting out a vibe and a personality that will connect and resonate with the with the youth demographic. And the final thing I'll say is, you know, like, what genius provides other frameworks don't, is the ability for you to generate a very wide range of of assets. So like, if you go to roadblocks, or if you go to any of these other ecosystems, there's very strict guidelines into what you're able to create. You can only make a shirt that is these parameters, and you have to, you can only edit the shirt by, like editing the logo between we wanted to make it where it's like Gucci. If you want to come out with a rocket ship, or you want to come out with the Gucci car, you can do that, and it can be properly equipped to a user, depending on his parameters and so forth as well, and so allowing brands to be extremely experimental in the digital world and and provide all those assets the utility. They're not photos, they're not videos. These are game ready assets that users can use and then travel with them across the internet. It has been, has been quite powerful so far. Now, yes, you are right that, like you know, somebody like PacSun, for example, any of the experimental, forward leaning, innovative brands are the ones that will be excited about all this, like the most, but I think, like very quickly, people are going to recognize that this is the most authentic way to build a relationship with the demographic that spends a vast majority of their time in places like roadblocks and Fortnite, all about UGC and co creation and existing as

William Harris  23:13  

avatars. I love it. I couldn't help but think I got a little bit sidetracked there in my brain, when you're talking about Gucci with the snakes, um, there's an Atari game, and I think it was called Pitfall. Do you remember this Atari game?

Akash Nigam  23:26  

You know, I'm talking about, yes, yes, yes, yes.

William Harris  23:29  

I think it was right. But it was basically right where it's like, yeah, I mean, terrible graphics. It was Atari but it's like, you know, like you're swinging over, and then it's like, you'd fall in the pit. There were snakes in the pit. And I'm just that's Gucci. Can make like, a Pitfall game, but, um, definitely I like where you're going. I like where you're going with this idea, though, of of this avatar, because I feel like a lot of ecommerce brands right now are trying to get more information about their customers, and they're doing really dumb quizzes and tests and things like that. I say dumb they're good, but like, they can get like, they can get obnoxious, and just like I, I don't want to share all of that you think about. Well, how can we better serve our customers? And the reality is, the more that you know about them, the better you can serve them. And so if I happen to know that you've got, you know, the Yeti mic, and you've got this, Hey, this also works with your microphone. This works with whatever you're doing. So I can better support you. I have to know that information. But if you gamify this a little bit where you're actually talking to your AI avatar, and it just happens to come up in a conversation because you're doing this, you're doing that. There's so much more information that it knows about you that it can actually do a better job. So I guess my question though, is there's a race, then for brands to have their own, but also just the generalities to just have one that's across all the different things. And I'm thinking of like Shopify having one, and they have, let's just say, one, then that knows your preferences across all of these different brands, so they can recommend things that are the best for you across all the different brands, like what I don't even know where my question is with this, but it's like, which one is better, like, for each brand, or for like, these mega ones.

Akash Nigam  25:00  

Yeah, well, no, I think you see, you're tapping into a really interesting point here, which is, you know, like, when we talk about, like, so we're talking about brands right now, but like here, let me pan out, like, I think, like, a really interesting use case, or, like, our long term list, a cost should have a cost Genie, you know, William should have William Genie. And if you're talking to your Genie, and then you're playing a bunch of games with your Genie, what we're doing is we're actually logging all that information and then synthesizing it into something, what we call traits. Every single Genie, or every single Genie. AI companion has traits that are logged against it. What are traits? You know when you're playing FIFA and then you're playing with Messi. Messi pops up and it says he has 99 ball control. He has 85 speed, right? Like he gives you all the stats around the player, right? So we've done the same thing, except for personality. So if you see a trade score for posh, it might say, like he's based on all the conversations, all the questions, all the games he's playing and so forth. He has a score of 87 Curious, he has a score of 77 I don't know, angry well. He has a score of like, you have all this stuff, and we're also retaining all key information, just like ChatGPT as well. So what's really interesting about this is that, let's say, for example, I go and I talk to the Shopify Genie, or I go talk to the Gucci Genie. It can read all of my baseline data that I am saying is okay for other brands to access, but when they access that data, they then can personalize their conversations around me. So immediately, when I jump into the Shopify Genie, it already has a global understanding of who Akash is. And let's say I'm like, Hey, I don't want any of my brands to know any of my intimate information. I don't want them to know about my baby or my girlfriend or blah, blah, whatever. But you can get access to my trait score. So if you get access to my public's trait score, then I can start to personalize stuff around a cost, even just on a general level. So I think, like all Genies are rooted in trying to be global and trying to have, like, as much of a breath understanding of everything as much as possible. But like, you know, we hope that the way that people will start to create Genies moving forward will be really similar to what OpenAI wanted with the GPT store, which is, I don't know how familiar you are with the GPT store, but they launched a GP store around, maybe, like, a year and a half ago now, and it hasn't done quite well. And I think it's because it hasn't been that intuitive, but it really, in my opinion, again can be again, like, you know, the next app store, in many ways, where you're creating these AI personalities with game mechanics based into them that allow people to be able to interact with almost, kind of like a mini mobile app with personality. And so we'll see, like, I think, you know, the questions you're asking are good, like, you know, one Genie or multiple Genies, niche understanding or global understanding. And I really do think it depends on the use case and what people want to be able to put out. But what we developed, and we spent probably close to, over the past three years, we've probably spent close to $100 million on building out just the avatar tech stack that we have today, and it's been, it's extremely rooted in flexibility, meaning anyone can be anything, anyone can create anything, and everything works with everything, which means all around UGC, all around interoperability. If you know, if you want to be an anime character, great if you want to be multiple Pixar tech characters, great if you want to generate a brain that is like this shallow. No problem. If you want to generate a brain that's this depth. No problem. If you want to make 20 games out of it, one game out of it, if you want to release it for UGC, for fashion, for props, like we wanted to create the most sophisticated framework possible so that it meets everybody's preferences, because that's the only way. Like, you know, when you read out like the Forbes headline, geez, they're trying to power the visual layer of LLMs. It's like the only way to do that is really allow, because everybody has a different preference and interpretation of what they want their AI companion to be. So it has to be rooted in flexibility. And when you're doing it as a game ready asset that you know that requires a lot of a huge resource investment, which we're happy we did over the past few years.

William Harris  28:59  

Yeah, no, that's huge. I want to go with a couple of other practical ideas that, while we're kind of on this topic of going from Home Depot, Pacsun, etc, some of the things that you and I have talked about when we talked before here is like, you know, an AI concierge in a game hub, or co creation of fashion props with fans, quest giver who grants real world perks, Avatar led content series like, what are I want to give People just some ideas of where they can even begin to start their soul searching, to decide, yeah, okay, we're ready to do this, unless that's something you guys help people with. But I'd imagine you're doing that for the bigger brands. I got a $30 million brand, you're not going to sit down one on one with them and help them figure out what is their ideal avatar. And so how do they help start soul searching, like the ways in which they should be doing this. Well, what's cool

Akash Nigam  29:42  

is, so we actually have something internally here, which is, like, working on incubator brands. So like, we have our big brands that we're going to be announcing, which we, you know, I've told you about, and that's like, entertainment and gaming and character and so forth, but there are incubator brands that we're currently working with where we're almost showing them, like you. Here's visually how you set up your avatar. Here's the brain behind your avatar, here's the behavior behind your avatar. And then these are the games that you can go play, like we do all of that. And so they should, you know, they should obviously reach out on our website and so forth. However, everything will be self serve, fully self serve, where you can go do it on your own in what we hope is a very intuitive way by the end of this year. And so if somebody wants to come there, to come to our site, to go to Genies.com, they can just do a text prompt, generate any AI companion avatar that they want. So let's say, for example, somebody comes along and they're like, they want a big snake. Cool. Go type that in, generate the snake. It's now a 3d model. It'll then take you to the brain, and you can go and start working through it. And basically you prompt engineer, like, what is the personality? Of my state going to be? What are the big facts that I wanted to remember, and so forth. And then what you can do is, before you do any of the games, before you do any anything else, you can just release it for chat. So you can just say, like, this is now something that people can talk to if you want to take it a step further, we have an XR camera, so you can create Tiktok content and Instagram content, all self serve with that, with that, with that character as well. And then finally, when you get really comfortable with it, you then can release it for game development and app development and so forth. But we're trying to make it a very easy entry point and low hanging fruit for somebody to be like, within like, 10 minutes. Let me just make something, release it for chat, see if I like it. And then as you start to like it more, you invest more and more time into the brand itself. And so for any of the brands that are out there that have, like, 3050, 50 million whatever like in revs, you know, I encourage you one to reach out to Jeannie now, because we are hand selecting incubated different brands that we want to work with. But by the end of this year, it will be self serve, and then you will be able to generate your own AI companion with the brain, with behaviors all trained on photos and videos. And then also, if you'd like to tap into the Unity ecosystem, you can use a genius partnership to release your avatar in the Unity Asset Store for game developers to access as well.

William Harris  31:59  

So what about guardrails. I'm thinking about, you know, Robin Hood maybe launches one, and then all of a sudden, the Robin Hood AI tells me. It's like, Nah, capitalism sucks. You should sell everything that you have. And it's like, wait a minute, that's that's off brand for them. How do brands also establish some sort of guardrails within AI that is, you know, continuing to learn and adapt to me or others?

Akash Nigam  32:22  

Yeah, no, this is, I mean, this is a huge point, right? So, like, for existing IP, right? This is, like, one of the most challenging things that we've had to work on for the past couple of years, and it comes down to a couple different things. Number one is security, and the second one is moderation, guardrails, I think, is up to the brand to make sure that like, hey, like, you are putting in all the information that is relevant to your brand. And these are the key facts and like we make it we try to make it as easy as possible, upload all of your documents, upload photos, upload videos, and the brain will be able to learn just based on those three artifacts alone. Now, you know, for some of our artists, we're even getting audio files. We're getting internal, like, transcripts. We're getting, you know, like movie movie scripts, TV scripts, like all that stuff, right? But for like, an existing brand, let's take a go home deeper, or Gucci. It's like, give us all the written documentation, of documentation, all the videos, all the photos, everything you have. And let's train the brain, and then you're going to put in, like, some really big key facts. And the two other points are more of just like, protecting you more than anything, right? So, like, a brain in the very beginning might just be like, Look, I actually want to stay away from politics. I want to stay away from anything sexual. I want to stay away from, you know, sports. Like, you can choose broad categories, and then, like, you know, the Genie will know how to guide the customer back and be like, Yeah, I don't really want to talk about the 49ers this last weekend. Like, I just, like, don't care about it, right? Something like that. The other two are ones that like, are pretty important, like, especially for this level of IP, you know, there's some, there's some, there's some of these big companies that have had, like, breaches with, like North Korea in the past, and they're like, look like we've had a data breach with some of the biggest companies in the world. Like, we need to make sure there's no data breach with, like, our AI companion, of course. So we've got to invest time into making sure that the security of the system, the security of the data is in a good place. The second part is auto moderation. So the moderation here is not just based on the chat level, but it's even on, like, hey, if I'm generating an asset with my AI companion, let's say, for example, I'm back with the Home Depot. I can't believe Home Depot, I'm mentioning them so much, but I tried to choose, like any brands I could. But like, Home Depot is like, ai ai, Genie. Let's say I'm creating something in their birdhouse game. If I'm creating, like a wooden plank, that's like inappropriate, like, we need to not just catch the conversation, but just even on the image or the output level, we need to catch that that is like, something that, like Home Depot will not want. And like, you know, it's like a you know, you. A Nazi symbol, or whatever it is, like, take that crap down. Cut it immediately. So we have auto moderation at the chat level, at the image level, and at the output level, and then you have your traditional flagging and so forth as well. I think just like anything, right? Like, there's going to be experiments, there's going to be first movers, they're going to be things that get passed. Like, we can't, we can't promise 100% success rate, at least in the very beginning, but over time, like, we're gonna get better and better at it. And I think, like in general, you know, you can, you could assume that night, like over 99.9% is gonna get caught, and that we put in enough precautions that if it does get past any of our three flags, that there's very easy ways to take down as well. But like, the guardrails are incredibly important, because that is essentially how you're crafting a personality, and what someone is comfortable talking about and what they're not comfortable talking about. And if I'm building a relationship, if I bring it back to the real world, if I'm building a relationship with a friend, you can kind of tell based on the friend's tender and, like, even their body posture, like, what are they what are they comfortable talking about? And then, like, when do you feel like you're hitting like you're hitting like a sensitive subject? So the question is, like, how can we emulate that and then bring you into an AI avatar, versus it being something generic? Like, sorry, I am not allowed to talk about that. I've been programmed to not like that. All of a sudden, you kind of lose, like, oh, wait a minute. Like, oh crap. Like, this is not this doesn't feel like I'm connecting with a real brand right now, right? Is there a way for us to be able to guide the conversation back and just stay away from whatever are the blocking topics and there are, we felt like there's natural transition points for sure?

William Harris  36:33  

Yeah, I love that you've been good at working through some of these hypotheticals with brands. With me, I know that a big part of what you guys are imminently about to launch is, like you said in some of these celebrities, music artists, things like that. I know that there's a lot that you can't talk about, but I can't help but think of, there's a couple of girls on my team here at Elumynt that are, you know, big Justin Bieber fan, and I'm remembering this movie, you know, win a date with tad Hamilton, and it's like, instead of winning a date with Justin Bieber, it's like they could actually just be, like, you were going on a date with Justin Bieber. Like, that's our thing, right? I don't know who is or isn't yet. That's, that's something that you've, you've been very good about keeping closed. But is there something, without saying a name, something that you're excited about that's imminently coming out, that you're like, I can't say who this is, but there's this really cool thinking about. And here's what I'm excited about

Akash Nigam  37:26  

well, so yeah, I mean, here's what I'll say is like, we've signed with some of the biggest agencies in the world, and then we've signed with some of the biggest leagues in the world. And something that genius has invested over two years into is this concept of Avatar auto generation. And what that means is, just by a photo, we are able to generate your AI companion avatar in a game ready asset form, which, you know, you've probably seen some of these apps that have gone viral in the past, but those are just, you know, like, if I submit like my photo into an app, and then it creates a cartoon version of me, right? Like, you've probably seen a bunch of those. Those are, however, just photos. They're not AI companion game ready, assets that have an AI personality, that have behaviors baked into it that can be played in games, that can be traveled with you, across from one app to the next. And so we've been able to do that just based on a photo, and it can happen within, you know, just minutes, whereas, by the way, like three years ago, for Genies, if we wanted to do it for one celebrity, which we've, you know, you mentioned Justin Bieber. You know, we've done Justin, we've done, like, 1000s of different celebrities on an individual basis. It would take us eight weeks to manually generate one of them as a game ready asset, sure. And so now that we can do 10,000 so quickly, right? Like, within a week, like, that's huge unlock. And that's why we've been able to nail down these big partnerships. What I'm excited about with having all the talent now ready to go and releasing their AI companions is, you know, like it actually is not going to be released as Let's take, for example. You know, you just mentioned Justin Bieber Zalk off him. It's not like somebody like him would release a one to one. You know, if his fans were interacting with his AI Genie, it actually wouldn't be thought of as, you know, his fans wouldn't be sitting there being like, I am talking to literally Justin right now, like that is what we want to avoid. When you call it a Genie, it is a resemblance of the person, and it might have key personality aspects of the person, and so you're building a relationship with that person, but it's separate. Like, this is, this is a different agency, or a different entity of that person. And I think this offers a few things. I think, like number one is it offers a cushion between the celebrity and then also the Genie. So it doesn't have to be like, you know, if the if the Genie says something that's a little different than how Justin would say it. The fans wouldn't be like, super critical, per se, right? They wouldn't be like, oh, wait a minute, like, that's not how Justin said it in this song, or blah, blah, whatever. And then two, it allows Justin to be quite experimental with this agency that is basically his pet to his audience. You know, he may not even release a. Be human. He might just say, like, Justin has released his dog. That's an AI campaign. It's literally a dog. And I can build a connection. I don't know if you like, you know, back in the day, Dylan Francis had this like pinata that he used to put on his TED Talk and everything, and people would just die. I forget what he named his pinata, but like, people would, like, literally be obsessed with this thing, and he used it in music videos. And, like, it was, like, this pet that talked. And so, like, you can kind of view it like that. It's like everybody can kind of have, like, their own AI friend that they release to the world, that people can, like, get to know, and then be able to interact with on, you know, a much more functional level past chat as well. So I'm really excited for that. I'm really excited for the fact that everything is self serve. So like you know in the past, if anybody wanted to activate their Genie, they'd have to come to Well, first of all, they wanted to create their Genie, they had to contact the company. If they wanted to activate it, meaning they wanted to create contact content, you had to come to us, and we had to create the content for you. Now we've created everything self serve. So it's like you don't have to talk to Genies at all. And any celebrity on Earth, any brand on Earth, can go create their own Genie, give it personality. Use our camera app to go create content around it. Use our our platforms to release it for chat, and then use our unity partnership to go create games. So like, in very, in many ways, like we kind of view this as, like a new era of IP development, what used to take millions of dollars and months, if not years, to generate a character and then create content, like whether it's movie or shows or short form content, and then go create games, which is like the concept of IP development, like you know, you can just do a 16 year Old can just do in an afternoon with Genies and so, like we do, think that it's like, you know, there's us serving existing IP, but it's going to become easier, more than ever, for a 16 year old to launch a Mickey Mouse from her couch, right? Like the next Mickey the next Mickey Mouse is going to be created by a 16 or 17 or 18 year old, and we hope that, geez, tools will actually play, like, a huge role in that. And I feel like the reason why I feel that way is because it is going to start with one on one relationships, like, yes, like the, you know, there's going to be games around this character that everybody plays. There's going to be shows and movies and short form content. But the fact that I can now go take that character out of the game or out of the content, and then have a one on one conversation, and that character knows me inside and out, remembers about me, I can talk to this character in six months, and it remember, like, hey, remember that really bad day that you had at school on Thursday and you broke up with this girlfriend and blah, blah, blah, whatever. Like, yeah, like, I was thinking, you know, that kind of reminds me of whatever topic I just brought up in that moment, right? Like, there's the fact that I can build a long lasting relationship is going to be, I think it's going to be quite crucial. And I think, I think, honestly, this is just like what kids will start to expect moving forward.

William Harris  42:57  

You painted a really good picture about some of the things that I think about with the Barbie movie, The Lego Movie, like those are created IPs for the sole purpose, for the most part, of being a commercial for their products, right? Like you, they want you to become more attached to their brand, to their products. And so you go out, you buy them. I'm gonna take this back to my childhood. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles comes out, and it helps sell, like, action figures of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and so, you know, you can play with, you know, Leonardo and whatever. Well, now to your point where it's like, well, the next version of this is, well, now you can actually interact and hang out. You could train with Leonardo, and you could ask Master Splinter for some advice. Like, there's a lot more interaction that could happen as a result of her, along with the movies and stuff too.

Akash Nigam  43:42  

Yeah, I think it looked like this. You're starting to see more companies and brands hire out their divisions around transmedia, right? Like there's like, this concept of transmedia has only really bubbled, I think, to the surface over the past five years. But it's this concept of like, how do I get my IP and as many mediums of interaction communication as possible. So there's physical merchandise, then there's having your social media presence, then there's being in movies and TV shows, then there's being in games, then there's being like physical stunts, like there's like, so many places for your brand to exist today. So the question is, how can you have one of your properties, your IP be as interoperable as possible. And so it's not just based on a visual interoperability, but it's also based on data interoperability. So like, is it as as a fan? If I, I mean, let's talk about movies and TV shows for a second. Like, every single human should be able to have their own. You know, I should be able to go watch a show and I add my avatar into it. I just throw it in. It's like, here's the horror show and here's the general plot, but based on a cautious traits, my anger score, my curiosity score, all the information and based on all the aigc, so the assets that can get. Generated in a decent amount of time. And because my avatar can equip all these assets in runtime as well, my show should be different than your show, which should be different than Allison's show and so forth, but it's all based on the same horror plot, right? And so the one on one thing, I think the personalization is so key here, and the fact that you know, you know, as a as an IP owner, as a brand owner, I know that my IP or my, you know, my customer's avatar, and my avatar can be interoperable on a data basis as well, all the data that I accumulate for me from one property to the next that influences one property to the next. I think that you know that that's where, like, people can develop very deep relationships with the brand.

William Harris  45:47  

I want to slide back down to level one here. You see what I did there. There's a slide. Where does this? Where does this sit? In terms of, like, an org chart, so growth, content, product, like, who would be accountable for this, if you had to imagine, in a company, who should be the one leading this, or who do you think is going to be the most successful? Yeah, implementing an AI avatar.

Akash Nigam  46:10  

So from a brand perspective, I think right now it's probably going to be marketing, right, um, however, over time, right, right? Like for any of the brands, for sure, I feel like is going to be probably like your marketing division. I think, though, as you can introduce more of your APIs into your Genie and more of like, actually core capabilities, and it starts transitioning away from like, here's branding and here's transmedia, but now it's moving in towards like, no like, it is actually becoming the new mobile app like this is a way for our consumers and our followers to actually tap into our use case a lot quicker, a lot more effectively, and like in a much more intuitive way. Then it moves into products, right? So I think, like at the very beginning, marketing as the world starts shifting away from productivity, AI, and it starts moving towards entertainment AI and everybody starts to get an AI companion. And the AI companion doesn't just play games with you. Is not there just to have conversations, but now all of a sudden it has the Shopify core tools that are baked into the character. So I can be designing and building a website or an app with the actual Genie itself. Like, that's where I think it becomes more of a product question, right? And that's not too far away at all. Like, this is the fastest I mean, like everybody's saying, everybody's saying it, right? But it's like, unprecedented pace of the Internet right now, and it's so like, look like in six months, there's gonna be, there's gonna be some crazy new crap that would have come out, right? And so you can imagine, like, what's gonna be there in two years. So I actually think the idea of an AI companion being a product team's focus is coming a lot sooner, rather than later, but for any of the innovative brands I want to get started earlier, your marketing team can get behind this pretty quickly and do some really interesting stuff, particularly with Gen alpha and Gen Z.

William Harris  47:53  

I'm a big fan of analytics. I think that what doesn't get measured doesn't get done, and so understanding what it is that we're doing and understanding if it's working the way that we want to, and in 10 in the initial stages where it's just experimentation, right? Like you just got to put it up there to see what happens and start to engage it. But if you could think through, let's say, two years into the future, likely, what types of metrics would be effective for brands to start looking at, like, number of of conversation started with this. Length of conversation started with this, things like that. Like, what are other things that will be open to them to be able to see in an analytics platform of sorts for brands to understand how their avatar is working? Et cetera,

Akash Nigam  48:35  

well and so, like, I'll explain so a genius AI campaign should be most effective in one on one right. And the whole point here is deepening a relationship. So you're basically converting your as much of your audience into power users as possible. And when you're looking at a power user, you're typically looking at average time spent per day of that user, with your with your with your brand. And so in this case, I think you're looking at how much of your fan base Have you converted into power users that are engaging in whether it's conversation or co creation of assets or playing games on a daily basis. Because the more and more that you can deepen that relationship, of course, the more and more opportunity you can then surface to your fans. And like, your fans and your followers don't have to just be like buyers of your product, but they can be evangelists of your product, right? And so like, if you want to broaden their power user community, well, if you've already made them basically feel like they're part of your brand or they're part of your company, then they will be, of course, your own megaphone, and they'll be running around and then getting, like the next people on board and so forth. But I think average time spent per day interacting with your brand is going to be the best way to be able to determine how good is your genius. AI companion,

William Harris  49:56  

yeah, no, that's good, especially with the amount of opportunities they have. Are getting into games like, you could spend a lot of time with that companion, not just converse, conversing, but actually just living life, doing life, doing things with them. Is there? Is there a, you know, ethically, is there? Is there a slippery slope to brands commanding that much time human being,

Akash Nigam  50:19  

for sure, I think AI in general, right? Like, I mean, like, Sure, look like, tick tock got so good at it that, like, every eighth video, or, you know, if you spend too much time on tick tock in the feed, there's literally a video that will come up that says, hey, you've been on tick tock for a while. Can you go outside? Like, it literally will be, like, a, I

William Harris  50:37  

didn't know that. Oh yeah, oh yeah, I've been

Akash Nigam  50:41  

there for the past few years. I'm like, you know, I've never felt anything feel more addictive that's like, overcome me than Tiktok. I had to delete Tiktok. I mean, sure, play with this, like, here and there, whatever. But like, you know, it would be, like, every X amount of videos if you spent more than an hour on it, like, it will tell you to get off the platform, and it'll tell you to go outside. It'll tell you why going outside is really fun, and why it's healthy for you, and blah, blah, whatever. There was something else that happened recently too, where it was like, hey, look, you may want to take a break. I forget what it was, and so look like, I'm he here. It's a slippery slope. And this is for all AI companions, not just for brands, but 100% the question is, you don't want humans to build an emotional dependency upon AI companions, right? So, like, even Sam Altman recently said something a lot, which I agree with. Like, hey, like, if we don't want a human to always have to think they need to consult ChatGPT to do anything in life, it becomes prohibitive, right? So, like, I'm going to the grocery store. What should I get to? What should I make for dinner? Okay, what should I get? What broccoli should I get? What's the best broccoli? Okay, like, you know what? I mean, it's like, crap, man. Like, just like, live life a little bit and try to stay present, yeah, just checking every single you'll live, no matter what, all broccoli is freaking good. So I think, like, there's, there's that. I think the second thing is, it's really important that you're telling the user that this is AI more than anything, that there's transparency as soon as someone starts to build their own interpretation, that reality is AI and that, you know, like they're living in a world of these characters, you know, I think the Microsoft AI CEO also put this wall where it's like, you know, you can very much see a world if we're not careful with this, where people are starting to campaign for AI lives, right? Like, almost being like AI. People deserve rights to like type thing, and it seems very dystopian. But if we're successful and people are building emotional connections with all these AI friends, and you've gotten so close to these AI friends, can't you imagine a world in which it's like, well, AI friends should be able to vote on our president, like, AI friends should be able to and like that. I actually think this is gonna be a real thing. Like, I 100% think we're

William Harris  52:59  

gonna get there. So it

Akash Nigam  53:00  

goes, it goes it goes back to what you brought up earlier, which is, what are the guardrails that are being put in place? How is the government going to intervene? Or how is someone going How's big tech going to intervene? And basically, there be some AI committee that sets up some level of guardrails. So it's like, hey, like, we can't have humanity rely so heavily on something that's supposed to be a tool and a mechanism versus a dependency. So look, I mean, like the world is moving so quickly that I don't know if we're going to be able to solve this in time, like, I don't know if we're going to be able to set in, like, the right laws or the right policies or the right precedents in place before people become too attached to these characters, and we're probably going to have to learn through failure first. Like, I think there's going to be cases where it's like, oh my god, like this person, and we're already seeing it. People are committing suicide based on, like, their AI personalities or AIs in general, telling them that this should or not giving them the right advice. So it's good that, you know, he's not good that people are dying, but at least it hasn't become like a mass problem yet. And these are significant enough that is getting the attention, of course, of the courts and like the big tech companies, to address this properly. Even just this last week, there's so much that's come out from meta, came out from even open AI, like, here's our stance on um, on how we can protect kids from AI and so forth as well. So it's becoming a growing topic, but yes, like we do have to be careful that humans recognize that these, this is AI, it's not a real person, and that there is a limit to how you build an emotional connection versus an emotional dependency on an AI character or personality as well?

William Harris  54:41  

Yeah, I think one of the things that you mentioned, that I really appreciate is I would almost consider Tiktok as a heads down platform, right? But, like this has the potential to very much be a lot more of a heads up platform. I got the vision pro the day came out Iowa, Vision os 26 just came out, I think last. Last night, now that we're talking by the time this comes out, it'll be, you know, a week or so. But the thing that I really like about it is, you know, I can set up my widgets all around my wall like different places, and I actually work using my vision pro a lot. So I can stand up, I can walk around, and it's allowed me to be more mobile than just sitting behind my computer working all day, sure. And I can see the same thing being true for a lot of things, with Genies and with the AI avatars, where I'm remembering, let's say, the Pokemon game, where so a lot of this is gonna enable a lot of other games where it's like, you're just up, you've got your glasses on, you're interacting with your AI avatar, your AI avatar, the Home Depot one, or whatever AI avatar you're working with is like, hey, let's actually go outside and build this thing together. Let's actually go do this thing. Let's be active. Let's go play pickleball. Let's go whatever. But I think that one of the benefits is, I think it might get people to be pull away from this heads down screen, which is very isolating. And so even though you're acting interacting with an AI avatar, it can actually begin to include you in more things. You can do things more socially the way, like I said, the Pokemon app was, it did that for a lot of people in a really good way.

Akash Nigam  56:03  

I look so so vision Pro is always in my mind. And I think many people's mind is stepping stone and a way to innovate, to get to Apple AR glasses, right, which I know that, like trying to cut out, you know, meta has actually done, surprisingly, a pretty awesome job. Like, I think that's like the first, glass type product I've seen get this level of cultural adopt is still nothing, right, but it's still like a lot more than what I've seen in the past. And it's a step in the right direction. And I see friends wearing it once in a while, which is like, you know, I've never seen that for vision Pro, for example. So I do, I do believe in it being a long form factor at one point, the reason why I feel like having glasses is going to be a lot healthier than what people think. Because people basically think that like crap, like the internet, is really bad for you, and like, you know, the more digitally immersed that we get, the worse it's going to get. And it's actually like, not, not, not necessarily. And the reason why is, let's say, for example, going back down to, like, a heads down platform, if your heads down. And let's say I'm playing basketball on my phone. The way that you play basketball on your phone is, you kind of, like, view it like a joystick, right? Like, you're like, Oh, I'm gonna use my thumb to, like, shoot. I'm gonna use, like, my left thumb to move and, like, move the character, or whatever, move the basketball player. If I'm wearing glasses, and it's telling me to shoot a basketball, I'm going to literally do this, right? And it might be packing my hands and everything, which that's good, because there's a couple things here. It's actually simulating what you would do if you didn't have the glasses on. So it feels like it's just more presence, right? Like you actually feel like you're in there. And then number two is there's gonna be a lot more of like, synchronous behavior that resemble, like, real body movements as well. So the fact that I'm shooting like this, and then I have a friend right here, and he's not a small character. My neck is up, as you said, and I'm looking to pass him the ball, it does feel like I'm literally playing basketball as well, synchronous so that everybody is there. And, like, the only reason why I'm wearing glasses because, well, these are my three friends that live in New York City, and I can't play basketball with them here in LA and so, like, this is my way of being able to play with them now, right? So, like, I actually do think that you're right there that heads up. One is, I think is going to be helpful. And then two, because a lot of the movements are going to simulate and represent the same movements that you do in the real world. Your mind is not going to be as when you when your head's down and you're using like these two little thumbs, and then you're staring through a screen like that is the escape, right? Whereas what we're doing with glasses and your avatars is actually just solving for presence, but you're still simulating the same actions in what you would do in the real world as

William Harris  58:43  

well. No, that's a really good point. I think that there's atrophy to certain parts of our brain when we do that, versus actually moving all of the different, you know, range of motion that we have. And you even talked about like broccoli and being able to pick the right broccoli, and not being able to do anything without asking, you know, GPT or something like that. And I think that's an interesting phenomenon. I'd say that I GPT like all of the AIS here. They're here to stay like they're so beneficial that I think that you you will have to use them in order to continue to maintain any kind of competitive edge in whatever that is that you're doing. But I do think that they present some type of like an atrophy of sorts, within certain parts of the brain, if you don't train those other aspects. And so I actually wrote a guide on what I think are some of the ideal ways to try to improve those areas in the same way that, because I sit down for work all the time, there are movements that I need to do, to work out on a daily basis, to almost simulate like I was still a cave man, basically, right? And there's the same thing where it's like, even something simple as navigating to where I need to go using a map, as dumb as it sounds, I will try to do that now where it's like, I will open up my phone, and I'll look at where I need to go, and I'll try to figure it out. Map it out. I'm like, Okay, here's where I'm gonna go. And I put my phone down. I'm. Like, I'm just gonna go there. Now I figured out where I need to go. I gotta watch the street signs instead of waiting for just tell me left turn, right turn, because I want to, I believe what I've seen from, you know, Huberman or something. It's like, my hippocampus. And I'm like, Okay, well, I want my hippocampus to still be, you know, big and bulky and strong and effective, so I'm going to train my hippocampus.

Akash Nigam  1:00:18  

Yeah. I mean, like, I'm with you completely, reminding yourself, like in the world of AI, like reminding yourself of the real world and like, what comes with the real world, it's like, incredibly important. I agree, like AI can be incredibly powerful. As long as this leverage is a tool, it becomes extremely dangerous if we, if we think of AI as the new reality, right? Because that's where we're going to have hallucinations, that's when you're going to have identity crisis, that's when you're, you know, like, there's going to be a there's going to be a lot of therapy sessions and a lot of therapists booked based on the world that we're entering. And so we just have to enter it with caution. It's just crazy for me to think, like, oh, you know, I just had a kid 11 weeks ago, 10 weeks ago? Yeah, thank you. Thank you. Yeah. And it's just, it's just insane knowing, like, you know, you feel like you're the new kid on the block when you're young, like, you know, I was young at one point, but like, when you're 18 years old, you're like, darn. Like, I was born in the internet. This is the cutting edge new stuff, the fact that my son, Nico, is gonna grow up, and he's like, Oh, you were born in the internet. Like you weren't born into AI, like he was born, he's literally the he is a ChatGPT baby. And like, I am so, you know, just like my parents were probably like, okay, crap. Like, how are we gonna balance this new internet thing, a Kosh, can't use it as, like, an escape. They were like, so strict with me about, like, how much I could use AIM and, like, all that stuff. And I'm going to be this, I'm going to be like, dude, Nico, you need to learn, like, the basics of knowledge, and then know how to leverage AI as a tool to advance your learning. Sort of advance, like, you know, your desire to understand a skill more, but like, it has to impact your real self. Like, if it does, if you're just sitting there like a zombie and you're not really retaining anything, and you're not practicing anything you retain, then what is this for? I was like, you know, like, then that's how, that's how you become like a couch vegetable, very quickly. So I completely relate with what you're saying. It's like just reminding yourself the real world exists, and that, like, you're here to serve your actual physical being happiness, and that, you know, you're not just living in a simulation, because I think that's where things get quite dangerous.

William Harris  1:02:25  

Yeah, well, I want to get to know who is Akash as well, because I think it's fun to get to know the human being behind who's here. And you talked a little bit about your parents and how strict they were with you on the internet, and that's one of the questions I like to ask, is, just what was your childhood like? I mean, you're clearly at the forefront of some of the most unique technology. I that, I think it's transformative, right? Like this is we are very much at the cutting edge of this. How did your childhood help you shape you to be the person who's at the forefront here?

Akash Nigam  1:02:53  

I mean, I went to Mountain View High School in California, right? So, like, in the heart of Silicon Valley. So it's like, I, you know, as cliche as it sounds, it's like, of course, there was a lot of ambition passed through as ambitious, maybe the wrong word. It's like, entrepreneurship was passed through osmosis, right? Like, I like to joke, like, on my soccer team, left forwards. Mom was a VC, right for his dad started this company. Like, it's just, you're just around at 24/7 and what's nice is, a lot of people have tried to copy Silicon Valley in the past, right? Like, you have, like, where are you based? Again? Minnesota, Minnesota. Well, okay, so I don't, I don't have one for Minnesota.

William Harris  1:03:37  

It's got, like, there's like, a little, like, silicon of the slopes or

Akash Nigam  1:03:42  

whatever in Utah, that's freaking hilarious. So silicon the slopes, and you have like, you know, the alley in the valley or whatever you then you have like, you know, Silicon Beach over here, and like, all that stuff. And, like, of course, there's like, you know, Austin and in LA, and Seattle, New York, there's like, and Minnesota, obviously. Like, there's always, like, a startup ecosystem that's blossoming. But the one thing that, like, typically, you can't replicate from Silicon Valley is generally how much people dream in the bay, like, from the a like, from when you're born, and like, in the Yeah, like, you're gonna get a lot of crap from this, especially from folks in Miami these days, but it's like, it's true. It's like, when you're born and raised in the Bay Area, like people just dream out of the gates. So I think, like, it's difficult to articulate, I think or not articulate, to be extremely tangible with like, this event shaped my life, and then, like, if this thing happened and impacted, you know what I did for college or impacted what I did for work. It's just like when you're born in it and you're just surrounded by a 24/7 you go to, like your parents barbecue, or like you go to a friend's house and their parents did something and like, it doesn't matter where, really, in Silicon Valley, by the way. Like, whether you're from an underprivileged community or from a privileged community, like you are surrounded by like you. Stuff all the time. And so, with that in mind, I think, like, that shaped, I think, a lot of the entrepreneurial spirit out of the gates. And then, yeah, like, I mean, you know, like, started building pretty early on, like 15 years old or so, and every single thing that I came out with sucked. It all failed. But like, you know, it was still, it was still good trying stuff that early, because there's little, there's little to lose. I'm 15 years old, other than my parents. I was like, I have no family. I have no college to even pay yet. Like, I have, you know, I just have to go to school. And, like, in the summer, I get to spend my time, like, building stuff, and if it flops, like, Okay, I learned. And so, you know, I like to, I like to think that even though I'm only 33 now, I feel like I'm like, 55 because of like, the level, you know, the amount, the amount of the amount of like, quote, unquote, experience that I feel like I've gone through over the past 18 years has really shaped, you know, you're one able to take advantage. I still feel like I have youthful energy, that bright eyed bushy tailed, really excited, and have a lot of stamina, but have a decent amount of experience, because you're able to fail a lot quicker and a lot earlier too.

William Harris  1:06:07  

Yeah, if I was going to sum that up, is two things, it's awareness and the permission to fail, right? And so the awareness aspect of this is, I remember my wife one time saying, it's like, would you ever want to be a doctor? Because there's a lot of things in the medical field that I've just I'm fascinated by, and I love it. I've studied just for fun, right? And what's interesting is, like, I never even thought of that as being a job that somebody could have when I was growing up. Like, like, I think I went to the doctor once every three years or something. It's like, to me, there was just no awareness. It's like, oh yeah, that's a career that you can choose, right? And so that lack of awareness maybe could prevent you from doing things. And so it's like, just having that awareness. And so people can do that if they're not in the Bay Area, by watching podcasts and seeing what other people are doing and reading books. There's a lot of great examples out there. And then that permission of failure, like you said, you're like, you're 15, and it's like, yeah, you should be trying something. Try, I don't care what it but try something, do something. And it reminds me of, I think there's Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell, and I've used this illustration on it before, but I really like it where I think there was two groups, and the one group was told to make pottery, and it was like, Hey, you're going to in 30 days, you're going to make one piece of pottery, and it needs to be like, this masterpiece, right? And the other group was like, just make as many pieces of pottery as you can for the next 30 days. And that group ended up producing significantly better pottery at the end of this time. And so to your point, it's like, have the permission to fail. Like, please get out there and do something, because your first ones are gonna suck, most likely. And if you wait until they're good, you're just never gonna do it.

Akash Nigam  1:07:29  

Yeah, 100% I mean, I love the way that you put that and like, yeah. Like, even that Genie is, like, till this day, like, we're especially right, like, literally right now we're in the thick of it. But, you know, there's like, this classic saying of, like, if you, you know, if you release something and you're not embarrassed about it, then you release too late. Like, you just mean it, just like, you kind of have to. It's like, dude, like, I know it doesn't feel good, it doesn't feel right, but like, you're gonna get a lot more learnings out of, like, getting something to market and letting people play with it, versus, like, what are we gonna just, like, infinitely whiteboard in here and just go off our own hypotheticals. And like, you know, like, if you're stuck in your own bubble for too long, you're gonna end up building something that, like, yeah, like, is maybe either one, like, you feature crap like you over built, and then you got to market a little too late or two, like, there's too much debt and stuff that people actually don't want. And so the earlier that you can keep iterating with a very Die Hard and loyal customer base, the better. And it's also the most fun thing, right? Like, being able to, like, ship and build products is, like, literally the most fun thing that you can that's like, why I feel like people should be getting in the game in the first place. Like you just, like, love that act of creation. And you know, if you if you remove comparison, yeah, right. Like you're not comparing yourself against other startups or other friends and what they're doing, you remove ego, and you just are purely here because you just love creating stuff. The crap becomes really fun, and then that's how you end up building something like really, really

William Harris  1:08:51  

awesome, yeah. Speaking of permission to failure, one of the things that you do that I absolutely have fallen in love with is unnecessary disruptions.

Akash Nigam  1:09:02  

Yeah, that's a complete side operation. When I'm bored, I have more time. But yeah, it's a really fun it's a really fun little thing

William Harris  1:09:10  

because you're flexing that muscle. Like, for those who don't follow your unnecessary disruptions, like, take me through one of the ones that you're the most excited about. Maybe it's the finger forks or whatever, but it's like, what are the unnecessary disruptions? Yeah, so

Akash Nigam  1:09:24  

fully bring that up first time on podcast. I know. So, yeah, unnecessary disruptions. I mean, like, the irony is in the name itself, right? Like you look at what literally doesn't need to be disrupted at all, and you're like, but if I were to disrupt it, what would it be? And I think you played it off nicely where it's like, this is just, you know, some people on the weekend, they go to the bars, or they go, like, you know, they people. Every everybody has their own vice of, like, what they want to do when they're outside of work. And like, for me, it's all about creating. And I want to just create stuff that, if you're an entrepreneur, like, you don't just have one idea and it's. Company that you have, it's like you have like, 1000 ideas all the time, right? And unnecessary disruptions is a way, like, a really, like, just like, fun, recreational way for me to act on some dumb ideas that are just really funny to me. And it did start off with the notion of, the only rule that I have in order for this to be successful is, does it make me laugh? If it makes me laugh, then I don't care if we get three views. I don't care if no one buys it. Like, I just want to make myself laugh. It's, like, my creative outlet. And so it started off with that, and then, like, you know, eventually it ended up getting, like, decent amount of success. So, I mean, the finger fork, one's pretty funny. I mean, like, the fork obviously does not be reinvented. Nobody's complaining about the freaking fork, right? Like, you go to dinner, like you were like, Yeah, this is, nobody's like, oh my god, this is so cumbersome, like candy to eat my steak. Like, I like, I've never heard anybody complain about that thing. And when you look at, when you, like, look up, it's like, history, it's been around for 1000s of years. Like, it's like, it's in no iteration on this thing, right? And so I was like, okay, like, okay, like, if you were, you were to do something to like, what would you do? And so, like, very simply, came out with a finger fork, which is, you know, it is what, exactly what it sounds like is these little caps that stick on your finger, and they extend as little fork, so that you're not just using one fork, but maybe you have five to 10 at the same time, and you dig into your food, and then you can eat it, right? So name one of those. And what's cool about it is, you know, but my thing was also, like, it was hyper focused on pace. The problem with typically, like, physical production is that, you know, if you have an idea, like, let me go find my factory in China, and then I have to produce x amount of units, and then I have to fund X amount, whatever. And I was like, screw that. Like, how do you just make one? I just want to get one prototype. I want to launch it on Tiktok. And I basically say, on Tiktok, hey, if this gets enough views and enough demand, then I'll go produce it in bulk, and then I'll go sell it, right? So it's like, it's a really cool way to be able to produce something very quickly. Get it on Tiktok, solicit demand, and then if you get demand, then great. If you don't, then great. If you don't, then forget. It was just fun content, fun thing to come out with. And then you move on to the next thing. So it ended up blowing up. This is, like, a classic thing where it's, like, you kind of have you want to release quickly, because you don't know how it's going to get used or, like, how people are getting feedback. The people that ended up buying it out and selling it out the most were all the oyster houses in LA, so they were just, like, pretty sick ones too. But they were like, Oh, this is gonna be perfect. Like, can we buy for all of our customers, so that when they come here, like this, that you can shuck waste? I'm like, I would have never thought that. But, like, cool. Like, more power to you. So, yeah, that was, like, a really fun one. There was the ant farm phone case. That one went viral. That one, yeah, that was with the ants in the phone case, whatever. Right, correct? Yeah, it was like, you know, you have like, a phone case in the back here, and it's an ant farm. And then you could put a bunch of ants down there, and there's live ants, and then you put in food, and we have, like, a whole instruction of how you feed them. And then it also comes with the playground set, so that you can let the ants out during the day, and then you could let them play on, like, their own, little like mini obstacle course. And then you have a little shovel to, like, scoot them back in that one, we got, like, a lot of hate, for sure, still, you know, it was still, it was really freaking fun. I That one was probably my favorite. So, like, a bunch of stuff like that. The last five months I haven't been able to have any weekend. Time is all going to Genie launches right now, but probably towards December. There's a couple things cooking that I want to release as Christmas gifts and holiday gifts.

William Harris  1:13:27  

So how, though, how do you like is this, you just sitting in a room by yourself? Are you like, Hey, I get some buddies together and we whiteboard out stuff. Like, how do you go about this brainstorming, deciding to put ants in a phone case?

Akash Nigam  1:13:38  

No, dude. I mean, it's honestly, it's actually like, I have, there's no one that you'll meet that has more add. Like, I could be in a meeting talking to somebody on this podcast, honestly, and we could be talking, and I'll be listening to everything here, and then I don't know how happened, something will just pop up, like, oh crap. And I'll just go onto my phone, write something out in my notes, notes, note section. And then on Sundays, what typically happened was there was one of my good friends, and she's extremely talented interior designer in LA and the reason why she's so talented is that her she has a she has a really good ability of, like, finding something on, like, let's say, Pinterest, or, you know, lik a couch that's like, $60,000 crazy design or whatever. And she's like, all right, I'm gonna go do that, but I'm gonna go do it for $1,000 with all of my network people in LA that can build it. So, like, really unique. So I was like, Dude, can you do that? Except for ant farm phone cases and for finger foot? Like, I don't want to go build this prototype. Can you go figure it out? And she was just like, a genius at it. And so, yeah, I mean, like, she like, if I had an idea, I would tell her basically on Sundays. But here's a bunch of ideas. Here's my ideas for content. Here are my ideas for prototype. And then she would just go ahead and go get it done, and then we would both release it together and then solicit the demand. So it was, it was really fun. I got to get back into it. But, yeah. Time has been, time has been limited, but like, yeah, that's why I was, like, my my bio is, is like, founder of Genies and then, like, unnecessary disruptions when I'm bored. Like, when I'm bored is, like, that's when I that's when I go, go to town with it. So, yeah, super you have any idea? Send them over to me, for sure.

William Harris  1:15:15  

You have a kid now. So I would say, on one hand, you will have no more time for boredom, but on the other hand, you have lots of time for innovation, like, just lots of ideas for innovation,

Akash Nigam  1:15:23  

so many crap ideas that have already come up, dude. I mean, like, I mean, you really do like, think about things that make your life better. And already I'm sitting there being like, why the heck do I have to, like, I don't understand why I have to sit here at this angle and hold this bottle. I was like, How is there no like, and I've gone online, I've seen some rudimentary stuff, but I'm like, How is there nothing that can be like a combination of those, you know, you know, like putting, like, different characters or different trinkets on top of your baby so he's getting entertained, and then one of the characters is comes down and feeds you the bottle, and then recoils and plays a good model feeding. Yeah? Like, I don't know how those things don't exist yet. I think there's like, an element of, like, Hey, you're supposed to bond with the baby. You should be feeding the baby. And I'm like, Yeah, dude. Like, let's say I've bonded with this kid enough, and once in a while I want to give him that some, like, really fun feeding experiment. Like, I should be able to do that. So, yeah, a lot of ideas have come up in the in the baby realm. I will say that there's, like, a lot of baby like that has been a very well explored and well versed area. There's a lot of really cool stuff out there for kids.

William Harris  1:16:25  

Yeah, Akash, it has been a lot of fun talking to you and learning from you. If people wanted to work with you or follow you, what's the best way for them to do that?

Akash Nigam  1:16:35  

Instagram, just follow me @akashnigam or or DM me or go to the website. And you know, there's a lot of different avenues there to get in contact with you. With a wide variety of the things we talked about today.

William Harris  1:16:45  

That's awesome. Well, again, thank you so much for your time and wisdom here today. It's been a lot of fun.

Akash Nigam  1:16:50  

Thank you, man, thanks for having me appreciate it. Yeah, thanks everyone

William Harris  1:16:53  

for listening. I hope you have a great rest of your day.

Outro 1:16:56  

Thanks for listening to the Up Arrow Podcast with William Harris. We'll see you again next time, and be sure to click Subscribe to get future episodes.

‍