Soul Fiction AMA Part.1
Jin: Hi Sous! I am Jin who is a community manager for Soul Fiction. Welcome to our first AMA session! We will take some time today to dig deeper into our project, walk you through the roadmap and answer all the questions we have received.
For today’s AMA session, we have a few core team members who are joining us. We have Lucia (our founder), Minhyun (tech team lead), Artist Lady Oong (who is in charge of our Soul Link NFTs and branding), Liana (project manager) and my colleague Nala who is the other community manager.
Lucia — do you want to kick off the AMA with a brief introduction about Soul Fiction?
Lucia: Thanks, Jin! Nice to meet you, everyone. Soul Fiction will be the world’s first project that merges the concept of NFTs with AI and Fine Art. The project aims to bring Soul Link (NFT) holders together to collectively nurture “a digital consciousness” of AI character which will ultimately become an autonomous being in the metaverse.
NFT holders’ interaction with the AI character is called “Soul Staking.” When the AI character fully develops and participates in financial activities, all participants will share the revenue that was generated.
The first iteration of Soul Fiction will be an AI-NFT of Imperator of Mars. And contemporary painter Kang Hyung Koo, known for his larger-than-life paintings of iconic figures, will add a hyperrealistic touch by drawing Imperator of Mars.
Jin: Wow! Merger of AI and NFT. That sounds so fancy as these two ideas are the hottest topics right now. For people who might not be familiar with AINFT, Minhyun — who is the tech team lead, could you please explain how this AINFT works?
Minhyun: Hi all! I am Minhyun who is the tech team lead for Soul Fiction but also have an alias of an AI from AI Network. “AI-NFT” is a paradigm-shifting Web3 digital asset primitive.
Imagine if in the metaverse you could open up and lead on a conversation with a fictional character from a novel or a reimagined futuristic version of an influential figure.
Most importantly of all, imagine if you can contribute to the development of the core personality of the AI chatbot and in part having an ownership stake in that facilitative network and resulting AI-NFT asset. For those who are familiar with Spike Jonze’s 2013 movie “Her,” a similar parallel could be construed with “Samantha,” an advanced operating program that develops into a unique and intuitive entity in its own right, yet shaped and further developed by each personal user.
Liana: Don’t judge me for saying this but I love Harry Potter haha! Are you saying that in the immediate future, we will have a metaverse where I can hang out with Harry Potter and experience Hogwarts? It will be an instant hit if we can create a game where we can interact with Harry Potter in real time! I am down to go back to school if Hogwarts is taking new students :)
Minhyun: I believe that media platforms (like books, movies) and characters from these platforms will be implemented into the metaverse. Not only are humans the main characters of the metaverse but these AI characters will also share the same space as us. In traditional games, we had NPCs. In the metaverse, these AI characters will become autonomous NPCs.
Jin: Just like the movie ‘Her,’ a lot of people already imagined a world where AI will play an important role in our daily lives. I think it is special that with the NFT technology, AI can be an asset. Theoretically, it is possible to leverage the AI technology to provide various services and the owner of the AI technology could be the beneficiary of the financial gains from these activities.
Lucia: This is the roadmap for Soul Fiction project! 15,000 Soulinkers (holders of Soul Fiction NFTs) will become co-owners of this AINFT and train this character together. We will form partnerships with other metaverse projects and if there are financial gains from these activities, they will be distributed back to Soulinkers. Besides putting this AINFT into metaverse, we can also write a space novel with our AINFT after educating this AINFT with vast amount of knowledge on space! The community will ultimately decide the future of AINFT :)
Jin: Wow! It must be important to have a strong community to increase the value of Soullink. To-date we have other AINFT projects like Alethea, ASM AIFA, etc. We might seem similar but very different from these projects. Could you please explain how we are different?
Lucia: Similar to us, projects like Alethea and ASAM AIFA merge the concept of AI and NFT where participants can train the AI character. However, unlike us, participants of these projects will train AINFT on their own (like Tamagotchi that we played back in the day). Soul Fiction provides an environment where everyone in the community will collectively ‘nurture’ our AINFT. Our focus is on the community.
Jin: Very interesting! My understanding of the motive behind the collective nurturing process of AINFT is because of the figure we selected to represent our first AINFT character; is that correct?
Lucia: That is correct. For our first AINFT character, the person has undertaken a role of planning a future city on Mars on behalf of humanity. This character is based on Elon Musk. Going forward, the name of the character will be the “Imperator of Mars.”
As Carl Jung said, the future of humanity is driven by collectivism. Regardless of the culture and ethnicity of the person, humans embody Archetypes which is a source of infinite energy that will set the future of humanity.
There is a parallel between our project’s mission of training the Imperator of Mars through the collective efforts of 15,000 Soulinkers and Carl Jung’s thesis that collectivism will set the future of humanity. We thought that it would be an interesting experiment to compare the future of the Imperator of Mars (which is determined by 15,000 Soulinkers) and the actual future of Elon Musk!
Jin: Got it. Then, can you explain why the project is called Soul Fiction and the 15,000 NFTs that will launch is called Soul Link? It must not be a coincidence that these names seem so scientific and futuristic.
Lucia: I wanted to make sure our project is more than “training and educating” an AINFT character. Figuratively, our project is breathing new life into an object. This similar idea definitely exists across different cultures, but in Asian culture, we think death of a person to be equivalent to loss of soul. I wanted our project’s focus on infusion of soul into a fictional character and hence named our project as “Soul Fiction”; 15,000 NFTs act as a link between the participants of the project and a fictional character where participants will fill the character with soul and hence called “Soul Link.” Holders of the NFTs are called “Soulinkers.” To summarize the mission of our project, the slogan is “Plug your Soul, Discover the Future.”
Nala: To simplify this further, think of Soul Link NFT as the ticket that gives access to train the AI character. Soul Link NFTs will be launched for public sale later this quarter.
Jin: Soul Link NFTs are shaped as neurons and are randomly generated by software coding. For traditional PFP projects, projects have 5–10 different styles for facial features (e.g. hair, eyes, nose, mouth) and use a combination of each category to generate a PFP NFT. However, Soul Link NFT inputs four different categories of shapes into our software and randomly generates a uniquely neuron-shaped NFT.
The reason why we picked our NFTs to be shaped like neurons is NFT holders will strive to educate an AI character by ‘forming its brain’ and in a way, NFT holders become neurons for the AI character’s brain.
Nala: Many people have asked why we are minting 15,000 NFTs. The more data we have the better we can finely educate the AI character. We think 15,000 NFTs is the minimum we can mint to refine our AINFT.
Jin: Soul Link NFT will be built on Ethereum chain and the images will be permanently stored on Arweave. The sale date and price are still being finalized. However, we can give you a sneak peek on our roadmap. Lucia — do you mind walking through the roadmap?
Lucia: After the successful sale of Soul Link NFTs, we need to build the ‘physical shape’ of the AI character. Although the physical body of the character can change depending on different metaverse environments, Soul Fiction team partnered with Artist Hyung Koo Kang to work on the body.
Artist Kang Hyung Koo is a Korean contemporary painter best known for his intense, larger-than-life oeuvres of historical icons, including Audrey Hepburn, Marilyn Monroe, Princess Diana, Abraham Lincoln, Winston Churchill, Albert Einstein, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci, and Andy Warhol. Kang’s mesmerizing hyper-realistic technique allows for delicate wrinkles and expressions that cannot be captured in a photograph. His dramatic images psychologically overwhelm and stimulate the viewer through powerful colors and recurring visual distortions.
Although Kang’s artworks appear too realistic for them to be fictional, none of the actual images he paints actually exists in real life. His artwork is not merely a caricature of existing photographs but rather his fictional reimagination of the central figure in painting — he draws faces of iconic figures in history as they might have or would have become in the future. Our AI character is based on Elon Musk but Artist Kang will create a fictional character based on his imagination. Soul Fiction project has become an experiment and an art project as 15,000 Soulinkers and Artist Kang will collaborate together to create an AI character. In a way, our project is perfectly aligned with the recent NFT trend where holders become the creators of the NFTs.
Nala: When I recently met Artist Kang, he described the metaverse as his dream. When Artist Kang is working on his painting, the subject of his painting will often appear in his dream. When he drew Van Gogh, Van Gogh appeared in his dream, grabbed a drink with him and interacted with him in Korean! He believes the metaverse is equivalent to a dream because imaginary events happen as if they are a reality. Do you agree 🙂?
Jin: I think that’s an interesting take. Although Artist Kang is in the process of working on this painting, if you visit our official website, you can keep track of the progress and we will share snips of the painting as a sneak peek on Twitter and Discord.
Now this is the part that everyone was waiting for! What are the roles and benefits of 15,000 Soulinkers (holders of NFTs)?
Lucia: Soul Fiction project is different from other traditional PFP projects. This is a long-term project as the Soulinkers need to train the Imperator of Mars AI for a few months at the least. We need a cohesive and strong community behind the project who clearly understands the objective.
After the sale of Soul Link NFTs is complete, Soulinkers need to enter the Soul Gate (‘chat bot’) and dedicate their time to train the Imperator of Mars AI.
The value of AINFT will increase as the AI character is more refined. This will lead to more future partnership opportunities. We as a community are focused on developing this product rather than simply spending the time and effort. Every financial incentive will be distributed to Soulinkers. However, we will reward the Soulinkers depending on the amount of time and effort that they invested. Soulinkers who contributed more to the project will be rewarded more for their contribution.
We want to be clear that we do not want any speculators or mercenaries in the project! We want to attract people who are interested in science and AI. People who can support the long-term vision of the project and contribute to see the fruition of the project. Please bring your friends and people around you who would be interested in participating in this scientific mission!
Jin: I think people might want to learn more about the technology behind this project. What is the AI technology behind the character?
Minhyun: Yes, We will use the hybrid of GPT-2 and GPT-3. GPT-3 (Generative Pre-Trained Transformer 3) leverages deep learning technology that creates sentences that are indistinguishable from texts created by humans. GPT-3 technology will be able to complete basic permutation, translation and basic coding. The data that is used for AI training will be stored on AI Network blockchain and NFTs will be built on Ethereum.
Jin: It must be a difficult task to train the AI character as a group. Everyone will have a different view on this; could you please explain how we can align everyone on this?
Minhyun: We will have a page filled with 1000 words that will be crucial in determining the personality and values of the AINFT as an input. We will constantly add additional data to train the character.
First thing that the community has to do is to agree on the important traits of the Imperator of Mars AI. We will have a communal voting process for each trait and move forward with the selected traits.
For example, this AI character can be the remnant of Elon Musk in Mars in 2122. This character can embody certain traits after staying on Mars since 2027. It can be cheerful or be jaded!
Nala: We have opened up a Discord channel called “Tale Contest” to start the conversation around this topic. We will also host whitelist giveaway events to reward the most original ideas.
Jin: As Lucia has said previously, Soulinkers will be rewarded based on their contribution to the project. I will explain this more in detail, in case you are curious.
After the community agrees on the next steps for our AINFT, Soulinkers have to train the AI character to achieve that goal by engaging in conversations. Soulinkers who engage in conversations that fit the criteria to help develop AI capabilities of the AINFT will be rewarded with “Watt,” which is a point system within the Soul Fiction project. The main reason why we use “Watt” as points is because we view training the brain through neurons as similar to charging electricity with watts.
Nala: A lot of people have asked if the point systems are manually rewarded. It will be ironic if we resort to manual ways when we are an AI project, right? ;) Minhyun — could you please explain how the system will work?
Minhyun: We will input the pre-conditions for AI NFT into the system. The AI system will selectively pick out conversations with Soulinkers that are most relevant to the pre-conditions. Soulinkers who initiated such conversations will be rewarded “Watts” and can be checked on the leaderboard.
Lucia: Additionally, Soulinkers with higher contributions will have a larger share of any financial incentives that arise from the project. There will be more benefits for these NFT holders! So make sure to participate and contribute :)
Jin: Thank you everyone! I think we pretty much covered everything about our project. Is there anything you want to add regarding the roadmap or other things on the project, Lucia?
Lucia: After the NFT sale is over, Artist Kang will complete the physical shape of the AI character. The community can decide the next steps for the ‘body’ of the AI character. For example, we can sell this artwork at Christie’s and distribute the proceeds among the NFT holders or we can send it to Elon Musk as a gift!
Additionally, Soulinkers with higher contribution to the project will be able to claim free NFT airdrop of body of the AI character (that has no AI functionalities).
We are also working with Krista Kim (https://twitter.com/Krista_Kim?s=20) on potential Mars metaverse project and we are also looking to open the new chapter of NFT 2.0 by allowing staking of Imperator of Mars AINFT to get yield which will be distributed back to the NFT holders.
The community can also decide on which projects we can work together in the future. There are so many possibilities (that range from Sandbox to other brands) and I am excited for the potential of this project.
To be continued…(Part 2)
Join our journey and participate in a world beyond imagination.
Be a Soulinker!
Website: https://soulfiction.xyz/soulfiction
Twitter: https://twitter.com/SoulFictionNFT
Discord : https://discord.gg/JBqqNYc2BK
Plug your soul, discover a possible future. (🔌 x🧠 )
