AI-generated avatars are increasingly used to deliver science content on platforms like TikTok, raising questions about how their appearance affects viewer trust.
Category: science – Page 4
On TikTok there are exceptional “testimonials” like Nikola Tesla or Marie Curie delivering short science-related messages that have garnered millions of views. This is just one of many examples where AI-generated avatars are used to communicate science—a strategy that might also have its drawbacks.
The generation of images and animations through artificial intelligence is a rapidly growing field, constantly improving in quality. Yet many avatars, though realistic, still present minor flaws—glitches, delays, inconsistent facial expressions or lip-syncing—sometimes barely noticeable, but still easily picked up by a human observer.
Jasmin Baake, researcher at the Center for Advanced Internet Studies (CAIS), Bochum, Germany, and the other authors of a study in the Journal of Science Communication realized that these avatars could trigger a phenomenon known in cognitive science as the “uncanny valley.”
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I’m excited to announce the third episode of our new series, What’s New in Science, co-hosted by Sabine Hossenfelder. Once again, Sabine and I each brought a few recent science stories to the table, and we took turns introducing them before diving into thoughtful discussions. It’s a format that continues to spark engaging exchanges, and based on the feedback we’ve received, it’s resonating well with listeners.
This time, we covered a wide range of intriguing topics. We began with the latest buzz from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument suggesting that dark energy might be changing over time. I remain skeptical, but the possibility alone is worth a closer look. We followed that with results from the Euclid space telescope, which has already identified nearly 500 strong gravitational lensing candidates—an impressive yield from just the early data.
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