Linden Lab Partners With Shopping Website Seraphim For "Membership Mania" Perk, More Profile Pics For All Residents, Expands AI Character Designer

 

 On Monday, Linden Lab made what it called it's final "Membership Mania" announcement. One was for all residents regardless whether they had basic or paid accounts. The picks section of resident profiles, used to "highlight ... your favorite inworld places, businesses, and personal memories." will soon have the maximum number expanded from ten to twenty.

 

Due to overwhelming community demand, we’re increasing profile picks across all membership tiers—including Basic members! Previously, residents could only create up to 10 profile picks to showcase their favorite locations, snapshots, and memories. Over the next couple of weeks, we’ll be expanding to allow for even more picks – soon all members can create up to 20 picks!

 

As stated, the expansion will take place sometime between now and about March 10.

 

Another perk should please some Paid Account residents who are shopping fans. For their latest perk, they partnered with the shopping website Seraphim. 

We’re thrilled to announce SeraPlus, an all-new exclusive perk in partnership with Second Life’s premier independent shopping site, Seraphim! This exciting new benefit will soon be available only to Plus, Premium, and Premium Plus members and brings you exclusive, high-quality virtual items from top Second Life creators.

Beginning in April, paid account residents will be able to claim gifts in the Seraphim sim. They will be there once a month, "Four times a year, members will receive a curated box filled with exclusive virtual creations ... For each of the remaining eight months of the year, members will receive one additional exclusive item ..."

They also expanded access to the AI Character Designer

 

Plus, Premium, and Premium Plus members can now access this innovative tool to craft and customize virtual characters with intelligent responses, unique personalities, and immersive roleplay capabilities. It’s an exciting way to enhance community-building, storytelling, and social interaction in Second Life. 

 

 The Lab offered this tutorial video, and a page with more information (here).

 

Currently, the only option for the Character Purpose is "personal companion," for accompanying you as you go about inworld, with "public character," designed for roles such as greeter and shop assistant, described as "coming soon."

 

Linden Lab first introduced the AI Character Designer in December, but soon suspended it after some residents expressed concerns, such as privacy worries and concerns residents might get in trouble for what their AI characters were saying.

 

To see the blog post in full, Click Here. 

 

Bixyl Shuftan 

Linden Lab Announces Then Pauses AI Character Designer

 

Several days ago, Linden Lab announced they were making available an AI Character Designer to Premium-Plus residents. 

We are making the Character Designer available on the main grid for early testing and feedback to Premium Plus residents. While we have completed initial internal evaluations, we encourage all interested residents to explore this alpha release, identify any issues, and share their input so we can continue refining the tool.

What is the Character Designer?

Developed in collaboration with Convai, the Character Designer empowers you to craft, customize, and animate virtual characters within Second Life. This tool is intended for developers, community builders, roleplay enthusiasts, and anyone looking to enhance their inworld experiences through dynamic characters.

Current Capabilities and Intended Use

The Character Designer provides a solid foundation for immersive roleplay, offering a range of features that let you shape and refine the personalities and behaviors of your inworld characters. Current capabilities include:

• Early-Stage Roleplay Support – Characters respond intelligently through IM, adapting and evolving as you interact.
• Custom Personalities and Backstories – Define unique histories, preferences, and communication styles to bring your characters to life.
• Integration with Existing SL Systems – Connect through a dedicated alt account, set arrival points, and fine-tune behavior filters for a seamless inworld experience.

This was quickly mentioned in the forums, where it quickly got hundreds of responses. Some expressed interest in the AIs. Some made jokes, "the thought of Second Life being so dead that they're trying to occupy its antisocial user base with chat bots." Some wondered if Linden Lab was doing this because AI was "the new shinny" thing in technology. But some expressed privacy concerns about private chats being exposed, "f that's not a password harvesting bot, I don't know what is.  NO WE DONT NEED AI." It was also brought up that anyone signing up to use one would be entirely responsible for whatever output it made, even if it wasn't it's creator's idea, "By agreeing to this, the bot, a literal black box I have no control over, can be made to say stupid **** and I would be entirely responsible for it. This is dead on arrival and has no place in Second Life as it's used. No one will want to take the risk that their store bot (perhaps in an adult store) can be coaxed into saying something truly reprehensible by a random stranger and then abuse reported for it, which as this is AI, should be pretty trivial." 

 

Finally after a few days and 17 pages of posts, Darcy Linden announced the new bots were being put on hold.

 

Hey everyone, thank you for posting in this thread and continuing the conversation!

We've taken your feedback and the Character Designer experiment has been paused while we retool.

I bolded experiment as that's what this is, and it's how we want to proceed with new ideas: get it out early, collect feedback, and optimize/terminate.

When we started this test, the goal was NPCs like Greeters, store clerks, quest givers, etc. It's a creator tool. The companions were an attempt to scale down as NPCs will require more work and this space is in its infancy. AI has been in Second Life for years now and this experiment doubles as an investigation into how we facilitate the allowing people to make cool experiences while respecting the rights and privacy of others. 

With that said, many creators have reached out to me personally with excitement and ideas.

———

AI in/for Second Life is NEVER meant to replace people. EVER. It is a tool, to help us connect, create, and explore.

———

This statement isn't a marketing ploy. We all understand the value (and potential dangers) of AI and are taking incremental steps to integrate these tools to help creators make the best experiences without having to toil over servers, load balancing, prompting, model selection/fine-tuning, and of course getting the characters to work in Second Life within the parameters we all deal with each day.

For the creators watching this thread and especially to those who make AI characters for advanced, narrative-driven NPCs in roleplay — we are attempting to make a tool that would potentially have a deeper integration than LSL can provide, and are not in the market to directly compete. If you are interested in shaping this product, I highly encourage you to fill out the following form and we'll be in touch: https://forms.gle/6w1X9PuFsAfsjxJk9 (heads up, I will be reviewing these).

In terms of data collection, the term 'harvesting' data came up. We work very closely with Convai and have complete control over the pipeline. To reiterate, data is not being used to train any models, it's not being shared, sold, or used in any other way other than to return a response. If something like confidential computing (where only you hold the keys to the conversation) is important to you, let us know.. That goes for any additional feature that would give the grid peace of mind

The thread was left open, and people continuing to comment, some expressing a little sadness the experiment was over. As of the writing of this article, it was 25 pages long. 

So for now, Linden Lab's AI experiment is on hold. For how long is unknown. 

To check out the forum thread, Click Here. 

Bixyl Shuftan

Cartoon of the Day: Say That Three Times Fast

 

 

Taken at Bay City. For those who don't know, "Beetlejuice" was a comedy in which the named character is an obnoxious and untrustworthy "bio-exorcist" that offers to help a recently deceased couple scare off the couple whom recently bought their house, but isn't as helpful as he appears. To summon him, or get rid of him, one has to say his name three times. He can try to stop someone sending him back if he's prepared. But if prevented from doing so and there's no limit to how soon he can be summoned and unsommoned, someone could potentially make him go through a rough ride for a while.

By Bixyl Shuftan

 

My Alt And I : The Story of Bun Buns Bunsies

People create alts for various reasons. Some do so to hide. Others to bring to life characters they've imagined. In real life, Deaflegacy has a stuffed toy green rabbit. Hearing about the idea of alts, she decided to create one with the personality she imagined it having. So how have things turned out dor Bun-Buns?

Read Deaflegacy's story in Extra.

Gaming News in Brief

Antilia Releases Character Creator Demo: Antilia, the Fantasy game that's been in development for about a decade, recently released a game character creation demo. Besides species, and appearances, players can chose what kind of background the character had, such as location, occupations of the parents, education, etc. (youtube) But don't expect the game to be available to play anytime soon. The game "is still in early to mid development," and no beta release has been set yet.

Wildstar Closure Announced: Carbine Studios, the makers of the Wildstar MMO which was recently slated for shutdown due to Carbine's owners, NCSoft, announcing the closing of the studio, announced the date of the game's shutdown: November 28. Some seasonal in-game events have been placed on an accelerated schedule, and Carbine invited all players on the last day to "Join us in-game for the final few hours as we have some fun. More details to come!"

PC Magazine, MassivelyOp , 

Maple Story 2 : There's an upcoming MMO that will be launched later this week that's gotten a little talk among people I know: Maple Story 2. A prequel to the original game, there's much more content here than the previous game, such as player housing. One review I listened to cautioned that the game comes from a company, Nexon, "that loves to monetize their games" and that it had the potential to go "very pay to win very fast."

MMOByte, MassivelyOp  

 Image credit: Nydia Tungsten, MMOByte

Cartoon of the Day: Beating the Martians

Taken at Club Cutlass. For those who don't know, that's a "Marvin the Martian" avatar Shockwave Yareach is wearing, a character from "Looney Toons" whom Bugs Bunny occasionally comes across trying to blow up the Earth for some ridiculously trivial reason. But it seems Jenni Greenfield is foiling Marvin by more painful means.

By Bixyl Shuftan

Roleplaying Basics

There are a number of roleplaying sims across Second Life. Some, such as Steelhead, involve a light amount of it, as while it's not required it is encouraged. For those in the Grid new to RPing, as it's sometimes called for short, they may not know where to begin. Theonlyjohnny Resident offers a few basics in this article which can be applied in and out of virtual reality.

Read Theonlyjohnny's story in People.

Webcam Program in Development Would Let Users Appear As An Avatar

How would you like to appear in video chat with a whole different look, one that doesn't even have to be human? That's what a product in development named "Facerig" is promising, and more. This program promises to allow webcam users to take on the look of whatever character they want over Skype and any other video chat service. And as your face moves and gestures, so will the Facerig avatar.



(Click Here if the video fails to load)

"FaceRig is a program enabling anyone with a webcam to digitally embody any character they want," states the program's website, "For now we're focusing on just the portrait, but we aim to do more in the future."

How does it work? The crowdfunding page states Facerig makes use of "state of the art real time image based tracking technology" from Visage Technologies, a tech company from Sweden, which is then combined with "a cross-platform real-time animation and visualization framework developed by indie-powered Holotech Studios and its partners from the games industry."

"A lot of research has been put into FaceRig by top level academics and professionals to create the current results, and if the interest is high and we keep at it, it will get even more amazing."

For Second Life residents, the potential is obvious. One could potentially appear in video chat as their avatar, whether it's normal human, anime-looking, furry, etc. Gamers would have the chance to look like a Worgen, Orc, or whatever gaming character they wanted. And it's not just users on online worlds whom would find it useful. Ohgizmo.com suggested it would be useful for those mornings when you need to be at a video conference at home, and you don't have enough time to shave and dress properly.

Holotech Studios decided to crowdfund it over Indiegogo, with the goal of raising $120,000 (US). But As of January 5, they had been pledged over $200,000, with 31 days remaining.

FaceRig will come out in five different versions, FaceRig Classic and FaceRig Pro for home use, FaceRig Studio for businesses, FaceRig Audiolite for those looking for a simple version of the program, and FaceRig Mobile "for iOS and Android."

Sources: FaceRig.com, Ohgizmo.com, canoe.ca.com 

Bixyl Shuftan

Cartoon of the Day

By Bixyl Shuftan

Cartoon of the Day

By Bixyl Shuftan

Meanwhile, Back in Azeroth

Finally got World of Warcraft up and running. Here's a look at the Pandaren monk I started up. Stay tuned for an article on "Mists of Pandaria."