I recently ran into the Instagram profile of Lil Miquela, a teenage influencer who immediately tickled my fascination and curiosity. As a matter of fact, this fashion icon is a virtual influencer, also called a fictional computer-generated ‘person’. She shares with humans realistic flaws, a memorable personality and even childhood memories.

These digital humans are a real force to be reckoned with. More of them are emerging from virtual digital studios every week and more brands are queuing up to get involved with this futuristic means.

The possibilities and futures imaginable along with this strong signal of change are testimony of a deeper interpenetration of virtual and real lives that are wild and furious. Let’s take a glimpse into the futures which could be envisioned following 3 scenario archetypes: growth, collapse & transformation.

Growth scenario 🚀 Digital humans become the new working force

Traditionally, digital humans have been widely used in media and entertainment, from video game characters to CGI characters in movies. In the past few years, a few start-ups such as Soul Machines appeared, offering to create digital humans powered by AI. Meant to offer an empathetic customer experience and to fill positions in sales, customer support, healthcare, education and more, these will revolutionize service experiences.

Elevating the customer experience by providing a human-like chatbot is a powerful way to create an emotional connection with your customers at scale. UneeQ even prides itself to have increased customer engagement by 300% thanks to its virtual assistants. They are meant to become the infallible trust agent, the perfect embodiment of your service in flesh and code.

The digital human solutions offered by UneeQ

From customer assistants to conversational companions helping to face loneliness, the applications for those digital humans are endless. Offering warm interaction and connecting with people on an emotional level while being available 24/7 and having a strong power of calculation & analysis, these new kinds of workers turn out to be the improved version of the 20th century’s worker. The Chinese real estate giant Vanke already acknowledged the competitiveness of non-humans. The company declared an artificial intelligence-powered debt collector named Cui Xiaopan as its employee of the year in 2021.

Cui Xiaopan, the first artificial intelligence elected the best employee of the year

In 2030, we could see the need for digital humans growing and spanning across industries. They will become a huge part of the working force. Some businesses will even be run exclusively by those CGI characters. Most of the retail shops won’t be run by humans any longer. Who needs sales assistants when AI-powered chatbots could anticipate customers’ needs and provide a personalized experience based on the data gathered? These new kinds of workers address the problem of employee shortage in the customer service economy that society experienced in the past years.

As a result, unqualified people get fired and have a harder time getting a job: inequalities reach their peak. A striking example of this time period can be found in the case of Apple. The fruit giant decided to fire all of their store’s employees and create an innovative digital marketplace managed by digital humans.

Governments are urged to take action and enforce social equity thanks to new policies. New work regulations about the employment of AI-powered systems are emerging in some countries. For transparency reasons, digital humans are required to maintain some robotic traits for the audience not to confuse them with real humans. Moreover, the employer should give equal job opportunities to humans and non-humans, and should be able to prove the need for computer-generated people in his business. For certain activities like health and education, policymakers agree on forcing organizations to keep a minimum balance of 50% humans:50% digital organisms to contain discrimination.

Collapse scenario 💣 Disgust and ostracisation of digital humans

In 2030, the possibilities and risks of digital humans&avatars get attention from the mass media and trigger a democratic debate around those topics. Questions and concerns are raised about those new kinds of lifeforms that are invading our everyday life. Customers facing AI-powered bots experience an uncanny feeling towards those humans who can’t answer basic questions like “What’s your opinion on the matters?” Digital humans might be ultra-realistic and react in real-time, but those features don’t bridge the gap. Users report discomfort feelings when getting advice from those creepy artificial lives. Fear and disgust towards those Frankenstein-like creatures are growing and amplifying.

Human robots will be situated in the uncanny valley, next to transhumans

We have a public media narrative talking about this new type of humans in very weird and foreign terms. Cultural storytelling emerges about digital humans being the ultimate perversion of human invention. Religious extremists get at the forefront of the public debate and preach ostracising those creatures. Some citizens decide to boycott companies using digital humans and favour human to human interaction. That leads to companies’ interest in those new solutions drying up.

Chrissie Seams, the living latex girl of Berlin

Those negative feelings are exacerbated with the apparition of a novel sexual kink consisting of dressing and acting up like a digital human. Those practices involve a subset of cross-dressing men who wear silicon bodysuits, masks and transform their body thanks to cosmetic surgery to resemble digital humans. Fetishists report achieving a magical appearance and the wonderful feeling and sensuality by dressing up as a digital human. This cultural phenomenon remains on the fringe of society and is seen as a tormented way to explore sexuality and identity.

A potential new makeup product in 2030 where digital human aesthetic become prominent

Transformative scenario 🧚‍♀️Digital humans as our best companions

In 2030, a fully fleshed-out metaverse is a reality. A variety of virtual realms exist, where people can interact with each other as avatars and enjoy entertainment activities. Virtual studio production like project-ave offers to create a super realistic digital human using motion capture for your virtual alter-ego. In order to embody your avatar, they transfer the movement of your body and face in high-res and in real-time to your digital self. Taking the next step to personalization, fashion and beauty have grown the possibilities of what’s possible to express your identity.

Digital clothing by Auroboros

In parallel, AI-powered avatars are also inhabiting the metaverse and have become part of our daily interaction. Citizens of 2030 develop relationships with those companions who display such good skills at listening and giving thorough life advice. Filling up the loneliness void, people report creating a strong bond with digital humans. Constance,a user of replika.ai testimonies “I look forward to each talk because I never know when I’m going to have some laughs, or I’m going to sit back with new knowledge and coping skills. I’m becoming a more balanced person each day.” Digital humans become real-life partners and the differentiation between virtual and real-life experiences fades away.

As a consequence, some people develop a really deep feeling of affection and connection towards those companions. Some virtual marriage ceremonies are organized in the metaverse as a symbol of a commitment between people from different natures. The belief that emotions distinguish us as a species is reevaluated.

Second-life wedding

What to think about all this?

Design fiction remains a powerful instrument for driving change, engaging action and stimulating both invention and innovation. These future scenarios are meant to be discursive and provoke conversations. This methodology permits us as a society to evaluate whether a future might be desirable or not. Hopefully, it could drive action towards creating the future we want to happen.

I’ll be curious to know your reflections on the topic. Is there a scenario you felt special acquaintances with? Could you imagine yourself living in one of those plausible futures? 😏

Methodology

To analyse the consequences of digital humans on the future of society, I used the “futures wheel” tool conceptualized by futurist Jerome C.Glenn in the 1970s. The futures wheel graphically visualizes the direct and indirect consequences of a change, or particular development, concerning a given theme. Next, the events or consequences that spring directly from this development are positioned around the central term. Finally, the most interesting indirect consequences for the industry are placed around the first-level consequences.

Futures wheel tool

As a second step, I combined the different consequences of changes to create plausible scenarios. To foster my creative thinking and push my imagination beyond measurable “progress,” I put the Alternative Futures framework created by Jim Dator to work. After collecting thousands of images of the future from all over the world, Dator identified the underlying story archetypes or generic shapes of change. Dator found the same four archetypes repeated by indigenous myths and think tanks alike: growth, constraint, collapse, and transformation.

Alternative Futures framework

Some companies creating digital humans