North Kingdom

Meet Gil, Good News Ambassador for LG and New York’s latest digital inhabitant.

Today, Dec. 14, 2010, New York has a new digital landmark with artificial intelligence on Times Square.

His name is Gil and is a so called good news ambassador for LG and will be able to react to and present bits of Good News to the world.

His home is the first ever wraparound HD billboard, developed by LG which allows both a southern and west view to one of the world’s most visited streets.

Because Gil is animated in real-time 3D, instead of using loops of pre-rendered animations, he actually can respond differently to messages, weather reports or news feeds so that he feels really alive.

His behavior is influenced by the good news he receives. He will be fed daily good news from RSS feeds and user generated messages through social media portals or through SMS interaction. He also reacts to time of day, weather, and holidays or maybe he just watch the people on the street, living his own life on his own schedule.

This creates a unique interaction between people on the street and our character – when he smiles, you can’t help but smile back!

Young & Rubicam New York, BrandBuzz, and us, teamed up with Dynamic Digital Displays to create a unique architecture for LG that integrates real-time 3D animation with Unity3D, mobile services, a customized CMS to source and moderate all data, an advanced AI controller logic and a unique puppeteering system.

Alongside his AI and organic behaviors and reactions, Gil also been developed to be manipulated through manual take over, which allows him to be used in a 100% customized way. The controller can have Gil draw from his behavior list to move and react, much like a video game control. This allows for customizable responses to consumers instantly.

Finally, the entire architecture has been set so that the project can evolve and grow over the next two years.

Stay tuned for more updates on this project and behind the scenes.