Niigata AI Expo To Debut Local AI Virtual Human Built On A Single PC
Running the avatar and its answers entirely on local hardware removes the cloud dependency and the guessing that tourism desks cannot afford, which is the specific problem the prefecture adopted the project to address.
Reporting from 1 source: ASCII.jp.
MetAI, with Ask Corporation and HP Japan, has built a fully local AI virtual human that runs on one PC without an internet connection, made from roughly two to three minutes of video in under an hour. Niigata Prefecture adopted the project under its fiscal 2026 subsidy program. A prototype premieres at NIIGATA AI EXPO 2026, Booth 54, on October 28 and 29, with a demonstration at NINNO3 from December 2026 to February 2027.
The prototype answers only from information the operator registers, and questions it cannot answer get contact details instead of a guess. Voice recognition, dialogue, and video display all run on the local machine, and conversation data is not sent externally.
Character handling has moved past live action. Calling a name switches between the flame 3D character Tomo, the anime-style Ana and Pan, and the 3D Taka, and the same avatar can be dropped onto a new background image. Japanese, English, and Spanish are detected and answered in kind, with Chinese and Korean still in progress. Filming the person for two to three minutes reproduces their appearance, voice, and speech patterns; backgrounds can be removed or kept.
Synthesized by Yomimono from the 1 cited source below, including Japanese-language reporting where cited, then editorially reviewed before publishing.