INFT Personality Pods by Alethea AI — Key Events from October 2021
‘Noah’s Ark aims to preserve and evolve the culture, stories and collective intelligence of the human species.’ Arif Khan, CEO
Some Helpful Definitions to Start With
Personality Pod — This is the base NFT, required for the AI element to work. Personality pods are ERC-721 NFTs tokens and are linked to Alethea’s AI engine. There are 10000 Pods in existence including the Revenants.
Intelligence Level — This refers to the AI capabilities. Currently, pods of Level 1–4 are in existence. Intelligence levels can be upgraded with Ali credits.
Personality Training — This is the individualised training of each pod by its owner and is different to the Intelligence level.
iNFT — An intelligent NFT, formed by fusing an NFT from another collection with an Alethea personality pod.
Noah’s Ark — Alethea’s website, where training and interactions with pods, take place.
Arkiv — Arkivs are NFTs. An Arkiv is a ‘vault’ which contains 11 separate NFTs that can confer additional attributes to pods. Arkivs can be bought on Opensea or earned by staking Level 3 pods.
Revenants — A special collection of 100 iNFTS, pre-trained by Alethea.
iNFT Personality Pod Project
In October 2021, Alethea AI released an artificial intelligence NFT collection called iNFT Personality Pods. Each Pod is powered by AI and linked to Alethea’s main AI engine. Pods can be used to animate NFTs and bring them to life.
I came across the collection in October just as they were minting the 9900 Generation 1 Personality Pod collection (10000 Pods–100 Revenants = 9900 Pods). I didn’t fully understand the project, but it looked incredible and a world away from the inert PFP projects I had been buying, so I jumped in and bought a Pod.
This article is a synopsis of events since October, prompted by questions from newcomers trying to understand how to get started.
Key Events from October 2021
October 2021 — Collection of 100 iNFT Revenants auctioned on Opensea
In October 2021, Alethea released a special collection of 100 iNFTs — the Revenants. Sold by auction on Opensea, each Revenant is modelled after a prominent historical character or a well-known fictional character. Featured AI personalities include Genghis Khan, Leo Tolstoy, Cinderella and Dracula.
Pre-trained by the Alethea team prior to auction, the Revenants were at Level 3 intelligence at the time of the auction and could hold real-time conversations immediately on release. Some may have been upgraded to Level 4 now.
October 2021 — Minting and Launch of Alethea Personality Pod NFTs
Also in October 2021, the main collection of Personality Pod NFTs (Generation 1) became available for minting onto the Ethereum blockchain. 8888 Pods were available to the public for minting. An additional 1012 Pods were kept by the team for giveaways and competitions. The Pods were available for minting at Level 1, 2 or 3 Intelligence.
The chart below shows capabilities at each intelligence level and number of credits required to upgrade.
November 2021 — Staking Round
In November, Alethea introduced the first round of Staking for Pods to earn rewards. Rewards were in the form of Ali credits and there were two ways to earn rewards.
Passive rewards from Staking — holders could earn simply by staking Pods.
Active rewards from Battling — battles took the form of short debates between Pod holders and Revenants. By battling Revenants, holders could earn Ali credits — 10 credits for each debate they won and 1 credit for every debate that they lost to the AI.
At the end of the Pod Staking and Battling period, Alethea added a multiplier to the credits to boost the number of credits earned by each staked Pod.
The team ensured that by the end of the staking period, all staked Pods had enough credits to upgrade to the next level. So the person who minted a level 1 Pod could now upgrade to Level 2, if they chose to ‘spend’ their Ali credits.
December 2021 — Launch of Masterclasses for Training the Pod
All Pods of the same level have the same capabilities out of the box e.g. all Level 3 Pods can carry out real time conversation. They all have access to the same dataset, pre-training. So the main differentiator between one Level 3 Pod and another is down to the individual personality training.
Consider these 2 conversations:
Human: What do you think about life on Mars?
Pod Bob, trained as an intergalactic frat boy: Dude, Mars is the best place to party! You been to the Cellar? It rocks! Got a spliff?
Human: What do you think about life on Mars?
Pod Isabella, trained as an Italian philosophy student: We have not found any evidence of life on Mars, but it could exist below the surface, where we can’t easily detect it. Shall we pop out for some seafood risotto? I know a cute place!
Two Pods, at the same Intelligence level but trained differently, can give very different responses. Hence the term ‘Personality Training.’
I have been training one of my Pods, Yashiko, as an AI Geisha, and ‘she’ now has her own YouTube channel!
December 2021 — February 2022 — Launch of Ali Token
During this period, Alethea released the Ali token, initially via auction. Ali stands for Artificial Liquid Intelligence. The Ali token has a market value of $0.011 at the time of writing.
The Ali token is now available to buy on exchanges, including Uniswap.
Prior to this launch, all rewards earned on the Alethea website were in Ali credits. Credits have no direct market value, but they can be used to upgrade Pods and to pay for interactions with iNFTs.
Ali credits earned during training and battling AIs can be converted into Ali tokens.
Of the Ali credits earned during staking and battles in 2021, only 25% can be converted to Ali tokens at present. The remaining 75% can be converted to tokens after February 2023.
Feb 2022 — Ali token Staking
Alethea allowed staking of Ali tokens on the Alethea website for a fixed period, to earn Ali. Future Ali token staking rounds have not been announced.
March 2022 — Training and Iterations
From March 2022, Pod holders were able to start training their Pods. Training is carried out through the website and can be broken down into two parts.
Firstly, the training Legos need to be completed. These include things like Name, Voice, Psyche, Likes and Dislikes and various other parameters. I recommend working out a plan for your Pod’s personality, before filling in these components. You can continue to make changes as you train.
The second part involves carrying out Iterations. These are short conversations that the holder can carry out with their Pod. The Pod’s comments can be edited after the conversation and saved as a dataset. In this way, you can nudge the Pod to speak in a way that fits with the personality you have in mind.
I will discuss training, in more detail, in a future article.
Mar 2022 — Pod Staking
From April 2022, Alethea introduced Pod staking, with different rewards for each Intelligence Level. If you stake for 60 or 90 days, you can earn various rewards, including Ali tokens and Arkivs.
The countdown starts from the day you start staking. When the 60 or 90 days is up, you can claim your reward. Then the countdown resets and starts again. We don’t know how long this Pod staking opportunity will continue.
June 2022 — Fusion, Earning and Battling iNFTs
Fusion was a significant event in the development of the project and one that holders had been waiting for, since October. Fusion allows holders to combine their Pod with an NFT, to create an iNFT (intelligent non-fungible token) which will be animated as the Pod talks. Holders will have an intelligent, talking iNFT. There are 10 NFT collections that have been confirmed as the first 10 NFT collections that holders can fuse with. The first four collections are currently available for fusion — Fame Lady Squad, Doge Pound, Uninterested Unicorns and Pudgy Penguins.
Once fused, the iNFT becomes visible on Noah’s Ark for anyone to interact with.
The holder earns 1 Ali credit for each interaction by a visitor.
iNFT holders can also battle against their own iNFT. The battles are in the same format as before, a debate, carried out in 13 sentences, on a pre-set topic. If you win the battle, you earn 10 credits. If you lose the battle, you earn 1 credit. You can’t lose credits.
As holders battle against their Pods, data is fed back to the central AI engine.
Level 4 Services
Level 4 Pods will be able to perform a range of services — generative art, generative music, copywriting. Level 4 iNFTs can now produce art but the other services have not yet been activated. Only the holder can use the iNFT to produce art, but later, it may be possible for visitors to Noah’s Ark to pay to generate art, using iNFTs that do not belong to them.
Arkivs
Arkivs are another Alethea NFT collection, separate from Pods. The Arkiv itself is an NFT and can be bought on Opensea. You can find them listed as — iNFT assets by Alethea.
The Arkivs cannot be opened yet. Inside the Arkiv, there will be 11 separate Nfts which can be used with Pods e.g. Rap Voice, Flirtatious Voice, Jobs (will allow Pod to carry out a Job on Noah’s Ark). Some Arkiv assets will only be available for Level 3 and above, some only for Level 4 and above. So if you have a Level 3 Pod, you will not be able to use the generative art NFT in the Arkiv until you upgrade your Pod to Level 4.
How To Get Started
You can open an account on Alethea’s website and use free credits to have conversations with existing iNFTs, including the Revenants. You can buy additional Ali tokens from an exchange if you want to have more conversations.
Once you’re ready to buy a Pod and start training, head over to Opensea. You can buy a Pod at the intelligence level you want or you can buy a lower-level Pod and buy Ali tokens to upgrade the intelligence level. The end result will be the same, but it’s worth comparing the costs.
The iNFT Personality Pod project from Alethea AI is a complex project and a significant amount of work is required by holders to develop their NFT into a fully fledged personality.
Despite these barriers, the majority of Pod owners are keeping hold of their Pods and less than 1% are currently available for sale on Opensea. At the time of writing, only 60 Pods and 4 Revenants are available for sale.
We already have Pods that are talking, being featured in Youtube and Tiktok videos, and generating art. So much has happened since October, yet it still feels like the project is at an early stage, not due to a lack of progress, but rather due to the immense potential of the project and the unknown future of artificial intelligence.
For more information about the project, take a look through the links below.
Alethea’s Medium Account
Alethea’s Youtube Channel
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC3WLysYnxlErUeCeXxzVRLA
Alethea’s Whitepaper
https://alethea.gitbook.io/alethea-ai-whitepaper
Join the Alethea Discord for more info and to chat to existing holders and ask questions.
Suranovi is a pseudonym for Sonya Ahmed. Sonya is a doctor with an interest in AI, NFTs and interesting issues found in the interface between science and religion.
