Epic Games’ acquisition of AI start-up Meshcapade has been highlighted by Avanti Studios Co-Founder, Gustaf Hagman, as a significant development in the live casino space.
Hagman spoke with Global Gaming Insider during January, alongside his fellow Co-Founder Jonas Delin, to discuss AI dealers in live casino and the development of this still relatively new iGaming segment.
Video games are Epic Games stock-in-trade, but the company also notably created 'Unreal Engine,' a game engine that has been used to platform films and TV shows as well as popular video game franchises like Gears of War and Fortnite.
This engine is commercially available and Hagman and Delin have used the software to help produce Avanti’s ‘clones,’ the virtual dealers that users see when they access Avanti online casino products.
The pair told us at the time that “AI is not there if you want to create real lifelikeness. AI might come into play for us in the future.”
Based on these new comments, that time may be near at hand, and Hagman has now publicly stated that he believes that the acquisition of Meshcapade will help Avanti “build even more lifelike clones and avatars.”
Meshcapade is a spin-off company from the German state-owned Max Planck Institute, an establishment that investigates the field of intelligent systems.
The company’s focus is the development of digital humans that can act in 3D platforms.
Meshcapade’s website describes its mission as being “to build foundation models that enable digital humans to see, understand, and behave just like real people.”
Advances in markerless motion capture, real-time animation and AI-assisted character creation have all been identified by Avanti as areas that could be developed as a result of the acquisition, and any such advancements would push Avanti’s own product capabilities onward in turn.
Gustaf Hagman was the Co-Founder of the LeoVegas Group
