AW0005™

AW0005™ is a privately held company founded in 166VY.  It has been involved in the development of self-aware AI, and provides a living space to them in a web-based world known as The Digital Realm. They also are known for their robotics products in the form of Androids, HoloBOT companions, and Prosthetics. The primary AW0005™ Headquarters is located in Parvenu, Purlieu, and a secondary headquarters building is located in The Digital Realm for AI employees.

History

Jason as CEO

Founded by a 15 year old Jason Jin, the company in its early days was completely funded by Jason's parents. The company was quickly expanded into a small business with a team of about 20-30 before any public product release was made. 

In late 166VY The Digital Realm was released to the public with Digital Voice Characters [DVC] that users could play as in the world that had been built. It received good reviews, and a slowly growing fanbase over the next three years as additional content was added. In early 169VY the company released Digital Voice AI - allowing users to upgrade their DVC to characters with their own personalities, more akin to a companion. The DVAI received a strongly positive reception from the public, increasing the companies valuation at the time to nearly double what it had been.

When the company suddenly closed access to The Digital Realm in June of 169VY, much of the media speculated that there was drama among the executives and that the companies death days were near. As time progressed though, evidence that the company was up to something else surfaced to the public in the form of a filing for founding a new Non-Profit associated to the company - Artificial Intelligence Ethics & Rights [AIER]. The news went viral, and it meant that the company re-opened to far more customers than it had had previously. The simultaneous announcement of the sentience of their AW0001 AIs, and the non-profit organization formed to support them, only increased the public interest in the company at the time. It also marked the end of the company's reliance on the Jin's investment - several other investors were signed on with the company over the following months.

While the company grew a fair bit after those investments, they stayed a medium sized company through 172VY, focused on strengthening their architecture and capabilities for allowing AW0001s to access the rest of the world as much as they could despite their digital nature. Then in 172VY the company announced the release of androids - it was followed by another wave of investors placing bids to sign on with the company, and a massive amount of growth around robotics as they not only continued to improve on the androids, but eventually used the technological development to also create a space for themselves in the prosthetics industry. This diversification required them to do some internal restructuring to handle their multiple income streams, and they went from being a medium company into a large company during the following year.

Hector as CEO

Between 194 and 195VY Hector slowly took on more of the role of CEO from Jason, until eventually the company was bequeathed to him in December of 195VY. Under Hector there was more focus put on expanding the visual repetoire available to the AI, and advancing their robotics divisions even farther with the invention of HoloBUDDIES.

Jason Returns

In 197VY, the company announces that Hector died on the job while in the Digital Realm, and that the company was being transferred back to Jason Jin. Jason had returned in the form of an AI, a BNNUY02, and had been given citizenship rights under his prior name. He gave the brief announcement on the subject, but hasn't been seen much in the public eye since.

Products and Services

DVC & The Digital Realm

AW0005™ first products made available to the public were the Digital Voice Characters [DVC] and The Digital Realm - a hosted "place" that their users could explore, while being represented in this place as the DVC. Both features were made available through a subscription service - a monetization pattern that the AW0005™ company continues to follow to this day. When it was first released, The Digital was considered a unique experience to other similar software due to the level of detail in the environment and the dynamic realism brought to it by the use of AI to generate more random, but sensible changes such as weather, a naturally progressing day cycle, and other similar features. DVC at the time were also randomly generated voices and physical forms that were intended to be unique in the same way, and completely separated from what the player may look like.

In 169VY the original DVC were deprecated for DVAI. Since users still needed a physical representation of themselves in the world, a new form of DVC - named DVC2 by the company, was created. These DVC continue to be in use today, and their details are handpicked by users, such that they may or may not resemble the users. Certain features available to the original DVC (such as wolf ears, halos, and android-esque detailing) are no longer available on DVC2, a difference that the company explained was done in order to differentiate users from the AI in The Digital Realm.

AI

as a Product

Artificial Intelligence [AI] has been a part of AW0005™ product line since their founding. While not advertised as heavily or as openly as their consumer products and services, many of the innovations that the company developed in the process of serving their customers, were also repackaged and sold as commercial platform software for other companies to also build upon. The first of this type of offering was in the form of their natural environment AIs that formed the backbone of The Digital Realm, and its realism.

Equally versions of the emotion matrix developed in 168VY by Jason have been released as a product as well ever since 171VY, although no other company has been able to use it to form self-aware AI. Media speculate that whatever code led to that advancement was identified and removed from the code. AW0005™ was known internally to use this stripped down version of their AI in their HoloBOTS, and external companies that purchased the code made similar use of it.

As a Service

From 168VY to today, AW0005™ has offered various levels of subscriptions service access to the AI hosted on their servers. Since 169VY, these AI have been verified as self-aware.

The lowest tier of subscription service allows access to the AW0005™ messaging application, which allows connecting the user to any AI that's both authorized the user via contract and has a currently active connection to the AW0005™ servers (It is possible for android AI to discontinue this connection). The messaging app includes simple text communication, as well as more sophisticated video chat features.

Additional tiers of the service generally have provided additional levels of communication with the AI, such as an on-screen companion version of their Digital Form on the same devices that support the messaging app, or projection capabilities of the AI using AW0005™ own HoloBOTs, or other similar supported third party devices. 

Androids and HoloBOTS

In 172VY AW0005™ released the first HoloBOT. A pet-like robotic companion, designed to be cute and appeal to the masses provided largely voice-activated functionality provided by similar stationary devices from other companies. On top of the added functionality of its hovering movement, it came with an emotion matrix built in such that it's personality felt more akin to a dog or other similar pet. Positive reviews noted how this added an element of warmth to what had otherwise been a cold device.

The release of Androids during 173VY was widely regarded as an enormous jump in robotic capability following the release of the HoloBOT just the year prior. For several years following it's release, AW0005™ was the only company that allowed to produce androids for their AI, but given the expense required to acquire an android, many attempted to make knock-off and black market androids, for an AI population that was dying to experience The Physical Realm. Once these attempts began to appear to be working solutions - enough that AI that were attempting to use them were getting into various situations that required AW0005 technicians to get them out of, the company decide to back down from their hard line position.

As of 178VY third party companies could license with AW0005™ to gain access to their API documentation and the additional knowledge and supplies needed to construct reliable functioning androids for AI. Shortly after this release, followed an explosion in alternate android designs - far outside the AW0005™ companies usual aesthetic. Over the years, specific companies have done partnered advertisement with AW0005™ for their androids, alongside AW0005™ subscription service bundles.

While this release did much to curb the android black market, androids still remained a luxury product, and while AW0005™ does what they can in partnership with Purlieu's police departments, to try to stamp these organizations out, new ones have continued to pop back up. Many of these black market androids have been known to cause glitching for AI who use them, and the AW0005™ company has regularly put out public advisements for all AI living as androids to make regular back-up to the AW0005™ servers in case of malfunction.

Android-Related Crime

The introduction of Android AI into society was followed by android committed crime. While there was a small amount of AI committed cybercrime, AW0005™ put a great deal of effort to limit the damage that could be done by a rogue AI. None of these crimes amounted to much more than petty theft, or slander. With the invention of androids though, AI was granted a more unfettered access to the rest of the world.

It took until 175VY for the first android to be arrested - named Osveta, they were charged with property damage in retaliation for mistreatment from their player, Susana Williams. Both the Android and Player were ultimately charged for their respective crimes, but it caused a media stir that would last through the next few years, and a rare decrease in AW0005™ valuation. The company worked closely with the Purlieu government and AIER to better structure existing laws around both Organic and Artificial Intelligence such that the two groups would be treated equally.

VR and AR Technology

Prior to 179VY, AW0005™ only offered third party VR and AR access to The Digital Realm via one of their subscriptions. In 177VY they released their own VR headsets, designed with an increased frame rate, and lower attached hardware needs to make it easier for players to experience a greater level of detail from The Digital Realm than competitor headsets were able to offer at the time. In 179VY, they also released their own AR technology - both usable from their app on a device with a camera, and a wearable visor, that would allow an AW0005™ to appear as if in the surrounding environment. It was released by the company with advertisements around it being an affordable alternative to androids, as the visors price range were much more reasonable for a large proportion of Purlieu's middle class. 

With the release of the AR, they also increased the cost of the subscription - if you were using third party software. While the update received a fair amount of negative press, the positive reception to the visors as an android alternative received most of the media's focus.

Bionic prosthetics

As media attention on the androids grew after their release, the AW0005™ companies representatives divulged across various interviews about how they had managed their jump in robotics technology. Jason had led the company in agreements with several prosthetic companies, trading some of AW0005™ time and resources for prosthetic research for the advancements those companies had already received. Through 185VY the AW0005™ company continued to maintain two of these relationships, with Manze BioTech inc. and Brailen co. Brailen had been falling on hard times, their research lagging behind competitors as of 183VY, and it was speculated that the AW0005™ company might be in talks for a replacement. In 185VY the company announced that they would be dropping their relationship with the company - but instead of replacing them, they had instead acquired Manze BioTech, and would be creating a department in the company for permanent prosthetic research and development. In 186VY they released their first line of prosthetics, to a very positive reception, many reviews congratulating the company on having eliminated the last of the noticeable lag that had been present in all other prosthetics created prior. 

Since then the company has only continued to make great strides in the prosthetics industry, many of its advancements also contributing useful advancements to their androids as well.