You can now practice firing people with this virtual character

Talespin has created a virtual character named ‘Barry’ who will help people develop their ‘firing’ skills.

Barry, virtual character created by Talespin. (Talespin)

Firing someone is possibly one of the toughest things to do as an employer. If you ever plan to work on your 'firing skills' this company wants to help you practice it with a virtual person.

Talespin has created a virtual character named 'Barry' who is designed to represent an employee ready to get fired. The purpose behind creating Barry and other VR characters is to help companies develop 'soft skills' which involve communication, leadership and empathy.

How does it work?

Trainees are given VR headset to enter an office environment with Barry playing the character of an employee getting fired. Here, trainees can interact with Barry and converse with him about the process of him getting fired. Barry will respond to the trainee with emotions a human being would naturally show in such a situation.

"When a user interacts with Barry in the simulation, they navigate hundreds of possible conversation paths to effectively (or ineffectively) terminate Barry, face common wrongful termination pitfalls, and experience Barry's realistic speech, body language, and human-like mannerisms," Talespin explains.

Barry is based on AI, NLP and speech recognition (Talespin)

Barry is based on AI, NLP and speech recognition (Talespin)

Barry and other virtual characters have been built using speech recognition, AI, Natural Language Processing, gamified scoring, dynamic feedback and enterprise learning management system (LMS). Talespin highlights that its virtual characters will help people become "better managers, colleagues, and communicators."

Virtual characters are becoming more of a reality with advancements in technology. There are already AI robots that have been trained to not only give speech responses but emotions as well. Just last year, Xinhua news agency introduced the world's first virtual news reader.