Soul Machines’ Jack Nicklaus NFTs include ‘Digital Jack’ video

Artificial intelligence company Soul Machines has partnered with the Nicklaus Companies to launch an 18-token NFT collection of Jack Nicklaus, a collectible for each of his record-setting 18 major golf championship victories. The tokens will be sold on the NFT platform Aspen and give owners access to benefits such as signed memorabilia, exclusive Nicklaus merchandise and VIP access to tournaments founded by the golf legend such as the PGA Tour’s Memorial Tournament and the Jack Nicklaus International Invitational.

NFT owners will become founding members of the Golden Bear Club, a new NFT membership program from the 82-year-old Nicklaus. Each of the 18 NFTs will also include a video from Digital Jack, the autonomously animated digital version of a 38-year-old Jack Nicklaus at the peak of his golf career that Soul Machines launched earlier this year. Soul Machines analyzed archived footage of Nicklaus to create its visual digital twin using motion capture technology to recreate his likeness, voice, facial movements and mannerisms.

“I have had the privilege of meeting Jack [Nicklaus] in real life, but many fans never get to. So this is an opportunity for fans to have a personal one-on-one interaction with Digital Jack,” says Greg Cross, CEO of New Zealand and San Francisco-based Soul Machines. “We are launching a digital golf club. Jack and his team have launched golf clubs all over the world, people who play golf are used to belonging to a golf club. So creating the digital Golden Bear Club is another really exciting part of this.”

Soul Machines markets its product as autonomous “digital people” software. Cross co-founded the company in 2016 with Oscar-winning visual effects specialist Mark Sagar, who has worked on films such as Rise of the Planet of the Apes (2011), King Kong (2005) and Avatar (2009). Rapper Will.i.am and NBA star Carmelo Anthony have also launched digital twins in collaboration with Soul Machines. Fans can ask Digital Jack how he would play a particular hole on a particular golf course or questions related to his upbringing, family and career.

“Our AI is about animation, interaction and the behavioral responses,” says Cross. “We put a huge effort into making sure that digital Jack behaves and reacts and talks the same way Jack does. The voice technology is completely synthetic AI voice technology. So [digital] Jack can speak in Japanese to his Japanese fans for the first time, or Korean to fans of golf in Korea,” adding, “this is a legacy project for Jack and his companies, brand and his family.”

Soul Machines analyzed archived footage of Nicklaus to create its visual digital twin using motion capture technology to recreate his likeness, voice, facial movements and mannerisms.

Cross envisions digital avatars from Soul Machines could be useful for businesses as digital assistants across medical, retail, education and other industries, such as a digital retail avatar that answers online questions from customers about a product or a digital nurse that answers when asked about a procedure. Soul Machines has also partnered with Authentic Brands Group to create a digital Marilyn Monroe.

Artificial intelligence is currently having a mainstream moment through ChatGPT, the web chatbot that sifts through internet content to produce detailed written answers to user-written questions. OpenAI, which lists Elon Musk as one of its co-founders, is the owner of ChatGPT.

“We work very closely with the guys at OpenAI, and we’ve been experimenting with ChatGPT-3 since they started making it available,” says Cross. “But there’s a line here that we think is really important because when you’re dealing with a celebrity like digital Jack Nicklaus or one of our corporate brands, the branded content is always curated. If you’ve played with [ChatGPT], it can get into some pretty interesting topics pretty quickly. So this is not technology that is ready for big brands to adopt in real life today. Brands want their digital representatives, their digital twins, digital influencers, to stay on brand and stay on topic.”