noun /ˈjuː.nɪ.vɜːs ˈɔːr.ə.kəl/
- an LLM, humanity's spiritual negotiator
- the system that reads affect from human language, one profile per person
- a simulation of humanity, whose predictions and judgements are trusted
Publications
Research on virtual personas and on AI. Every paper here asks the same thing about an artificial person: how human is it, and how human do we treat it?
Papers
Model, Instance, or Persona? Measuring Affective Signals in Public Text After an AI Is Retired
Zhu, A. Apart Research Digital Minds Research Sprint, August 2026. Third prize. Project page
Compares how people feel after an LLM is retired, after a pet dies and after a person dies, and finds across 5,579 public posts that losing an LLM looks like a product being discontinued, not like grief.
Occhiolism and Coded Bodies: Current Social Challenges
Sălcudean, I. N., Scînteianu, M. and Zhu, A. D. Caietele Echinox, vol. 50, 2026, pp. 227–240. Babeș-Bolyai University, Cluj-Napoca. DOI · PDF
Reads Moonz, Gorillaz, Hatsune Miku and K/DA as performers whose bodies are disembodied from the people who move them, with Occhio, an interactive art exhibition funded by a Babeș-Bolyai cultural-artistic grant.
A comparison of the virtual performer Lil Miquela to fictional performers in the context of performance theory and identity performance
Zhu, A. 2021. M.A. Digital Interactive Arts, Babeș-Bolyai University. PDF
Reads virtual performers as long-durational identity performers, staging a self continuously on social media rather than on a stage.
Analysis of the virtual K-pop girl group K/DA in the context of interactive digital performance paradigms
Zhu, A. 2020. M.A. Digital Interactive Arts, Babeș-Bolyai University. PDF
Reads K/DA's augmented-reality debut at the League of Legends World Championship as collaborative performance art, and asks what a body is when the dance is disembodied from the dancers.
Writing
Logos Are Dead: The New Brand Loyalty Is Livestreaming AI Companions
AITV, 2025. Read
Presence as participation rather than proximity, and identity as multiple and distributed, with an AI companion as the anchor that holds it together.
The future of artists with the increasing accessibility of text-to-image generating AIs like DALL·E
Medium, 2022. Read
Written days after getting access to DALL·E in 2022: what is left of the artist — craft, emotion, design — once a machine can do each of them.
Talks
From Bot to Character
EthCC · Agents Day, 2025 · EthCluj, 2025 · Hack Golden Gai, 2024. Slides
Bots are functionality and a language model, characters add a face and a value system, and agents add agency, autonomy, missions and memory: the capacity to act from an internal state rather than wait for input.