Why and how avatars will rule video calls

You'll be quite the character when all video calls show your avatar, rather than video of your face. But Big Tech will need to find the sweet spot between photo-realistic and cartoonish.

Jul 12, 2023

Everybody’s going to love avatar-based video calls some day. Using avatars that copy your every expression, tilt of the head, mouth movements and hand gestures in real time eliminates concern over bad hair days, messy backgrounds, crappy cameras, horrible lighting and people photobombing your calls. Best of all, you can make eye contact with avatars.

Meta today announced that its Meta avatars can be used in place of video for Instagram and Messenger calls.

Apple unveiled its Vision Pro platform and promised an “avatar webcam” feature for all visionOS apps that want to do calls. Users map their face, then the visionOS system animates that face using the wearer’s real-time expressions and hand movements. These will appear as “Spatial Personas.” that float in space, rather than inside a window.

Zoom started supporting avatar-based video calls in January.

Microsoft recently rolled out avatars for Microsoft Teams calls.

Samsung uses Loomie.ai avatar technology for its phones.

So far, the big companies promoting avatars have failed to design an avatar system that strikes the right balance between photo-realistic and cartoonish.

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