Adidas Launches Personality-Based Metaverse Virtual Beings With Ready Player Me

Adidas is promoting its latest Ozworld shoe collection with AI-generated digital avatars for the metaverse. Virtual being platform Ready Player Me produces the characters based on the answers to a personality test. Users can then explore the metaverse with the resulting three-dimensional digital characters.

Adidas Metaverse

When visiting the Adidas Originals page, users are offered a series of questions about their preferences and interests. The idea is to generate a digital alter ego representing a personality over physical appearances. Ready Player Me’s technology translates those answers into a virtual being like the one seen above. The startup, which raised $13 million at the end of last year, also provides the cross-app metaverse platform for using those characters to jump around different virtual worlds. Adidas has been experimenting with the metaverse in other ways already, including producing NFTs based on its products. Those with an Adidas NFT are getting early access to the virtual being generator too. The avatars officially go live on April 28.

“Having generated their characters, users can experiment by animating their avatars, as well as digitally trying on and purchasing sneakers from the collection,” Adidas explained in announcing the project. “A bold new step towards the future of personal expression in the virtual world – each unique avatar will be able to traverse the web through a bespoke partnership with Ready Player Me. This is the first brand partnership that pushes the limits of the platform – offering interoperability in generative avatars with over 1500 different metaverse apps and games.”

Metaverse Expression

As the metaverse grows, there’s been a rapid increase in demand for virtual being platforms like Ready Player Me that can populate the digital spaces run by companies like Meta, Baidu and Nvidia with human-controlled and AI avatars. There’s a steady drumbeat of funding for virtual being startups Inworld’s recent $10 million, the $21.5 million raised by Neosapience, or Soul Machines’ enormous $70 million funding, not to mention the hyperrealistic virtual humans and creatures under development by video game makers like Krafton. Partnerships with Adidas and other major consumer brands may be the key to giving these tech developers an edge.

Follow @voicebotai   Follow @erichschwartz

Ready Player Me Raises $13M for Metaverse Virtual Human Creation

Virtual Human Brand Ambassador Sophie is Selling NFTs and Metaverse Art Experiences

Mark Cuban and Deadmau5 Raise $5M for Metaverse Startup Oorbit