Jaunted

Use #2 for AVA's is to do stuff with travelers—provide very basic information, assist with very basic tasks, and so on. They can be glorified kiosks, except with reassuring voices and disturbing facial movements. Like kiosks they can work indefinitely and, importantly for airports and airlines, without any pay. Unlike kiosks they have the potential to make travelers' skins crawl. There's this, of course, but there's also how the eyes of the avatars follow travelers around.

Right now the newly-installed avatars are all on loops providing basic airport information. Soon they'll be able to interact with customers. We can envision a day in which rows of these things—all of them tall, blond, pretty, and focus-grouped, like the current models—will line the insides of terminals. They'll be able to help travelers navigate standby, rebook missed flights, or do many of the things human employees currently do.

If you want to know how insanely creepy things are getting, take a look at the commercial embedded at the very bottom. Key phrase, before the part about airport usage: "I can be used for just about anything. I can say what you want, dress the way you want, and be just about anything you want me to be."

[Photo: CBS News]