An AI replica of Chinese swimmer Zhang Yufei at the China House. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Chinese technology company iFlytek is making waves at the ongoing Paris 2024 Olympic Games by showcasing its latest artificial intelligence technologies at the China House, a pavilion located in the Hotel Salomon de Rothschild in Paris.

The main attraction at the China House is two digital Chinese athletes—AI replicas of swimmer Zhang Yufei and gymnast Zou Jingyuan. These virtual athletes are nearly indistinguishable from their real-life counterparts, capturing the attention of visitors with their lifelike appearance and expressions. The AI figures greet visitors with phrases like "Hello, I am Zhang Yufei, pleased to meet you!", creating an experience that feels almost like interacting with the real athletes.

These AI athletes are equipped with advanced AI technologies, including speech synthesis, speech recognition, semantic understanding, lip movement prediction, and image processing, developed by iFlytek. Even in the bustling and noisy environment of the pavilion, they can accurately capture the speech of visitors and respond appropriately, thanks to sophisticated multi-speaker speech recognition technology, iFlytek said.

Impressively, the AI versions of Zhang Yufei and Zou Jingyuan can seamlessly switch between Chinese, English, and French, engaging with athletes and visitors from around the world without the need for translation devices, iFlytek added.

According to the company, such ability to handle a multitude of questions from diverse cultural backgrounds showcases the power of its multilingual intelligent voice technology.