Trump vs. Biden

This year's presidential election is going to be a roller-coaster and the result will have a global impact. Everyone is going to be watching.

People are anxious and want to talk about their views, but it can be so polarizing that it can tear apart friendships and families. I heard about one such person who was feeling lonely because of their political perspective, so I created an Avatar aligned with their views that they could talk to. Wanting to be fair, I created another Avatar for the other party.

And then Wedge Martin suggested we have the two Avatars debate each-other. Queue up a weekend hacking session.

The debate feature is still in beta, but you can try it for Trump vs. Biden. I had considered doing an "auto-play" so each side would just keep on chatting, but I found it much more pleasant to read one message from each candidate and then have a button to start the next round.

After a few days of tweaking the candidate positions, prompt scripts, and prompt logic, they are starting to be pretty... entertaining.

Derek has added a few of the other presidential candidates: Jill Stein, RFK Jr., and Cornel West. And drawing inspiration from this last weekend's Saturday Night Live episode, we also added RFK's brain worm to the debate. Yes, you can now watch RFK debate with his own brain worm, or pit the brain worm against Trump!

You can find all these matchups on the new Avatar Factory home screen. Or you can create any matchup you want by first starting a chat with an avatar, and then pressing the +person icon on the lower right toolbar. If you enjoy a debate you have created please consider sharing it with a friend!

On a more serious note...

While the debate feature is very fun, it opens the door to many other possibilities. You should be able to chat with any political candidate to learn more about their views. You should also be able to discuss any proposition on a ballot.

I also believe these simulations will make us challenge the candidates to be better. My first pass with using Google's Gemini resulted in very intelligent, considerate, and concise debates. While technically very good from a debate perspective, they seemed so unreal - people aren't robots, they are emotional and reactive and sometimes say things that aren't well thought through. Wait, isn't that kind of a bad thing? What will our new standards be?

Avatar Factory is a platform to create your own Avatars. I'm hoping people take these starting Avatars, clone them, and morph them in every way possible so we can see all the ways these candidates could, and maybe should, answer questions about their platforms and interact with each other. And perhaps then, with that rich perspective, we can cast more informed votes and benefit from better leadership.

Intentional AI conversations are going to drive an incredible level of engagement with voters in this election year. Put on your seat-belt, it's going to be the ride of a lifetime!