Artie Emerges From Stealth, Building A Platform For Intelligent Avatars
“AI & AR Technology Startup Backed by Leading Investors Enables Creators to Make an Entirely New Form of Content”
Artie, an AI & AR technology company focused on mobile augmented reality, announced its official launch.
The company’s software allows content creators to bring virtual characters to life with its proprietary Wonderfriend Engine, which makes it easy to create avatar-to-consumer interactions that are lifelike and highly engaging.
Once created, the avatars exist in AR where they can interact and converse with consumers and each other. The company is founded by Ryan Horrigan and Armando Kirwin, veterans of the immersive technology space with decades of combined experience in emerging media and global entertainment.
Artie’s technology enables its avatars to recognize a large variety of objects and many common facial expressions in real-time. Artie is also developing its proprietary Instant Avatar technology, which will enable its avatars to be shareable via standard hyperlinks. This allows the avatars to be discovered on social media and other popular content platforms; for example, in the bio of a celebrity’s Instagram account or in the description of a movie trailer on YouTube.
“Unlike other avatar apps, which only allow consumers to create and manually puppet avatars based on their own likeness for chat purposes, Artie enables consumers to interact and converse directly with their favorite characters,” said Ryan Horrigan, Co-founder and CEO of Artie. “We plan to unlock new value for the world’s biggest IP by creating a new form of avatar-based entertainment.“
With Artie’s deep-learning insights and analytics platform, creators can monitor engagement with their avatars in real-time. The platform also captures user behaviors to drive neural networks that automatically train and improve an avatar’s performance over time, enabling more entertaining and lifelike interactions for each subsequent user.
“Advancements in machine learning, natural language processing, computer vision and sentiment analysis allow our users to create intelligent avatars that are much more engaging than traditional media,” said Armando Kirwin, Co-founder of Artie. “Our avatars will actually learn from you, and become increasingly entertaining the more you interact with them.”
Artie is backed by top strategic investors in AI, AR, and entertainment, including Founders Fund (with partner Cyan Banister also investing personally), The Venture Reality Fund, WndrCo, M Ventures, Metaverse Ventures (a DCG company), YouTube Co-founder and former CEO Chad Hurley, and Ubiquity6 Co-founder and CEO Anjney Midha.
“We expect to see AI-driven avatars become mainstream experiences for consumers,” says Tipatat Chennavasin, General Partner of the Venture Reality Fund. “Artie’s deep learning technology combined with their Wonderfriend engine will deliver unique mobile AR experiences that offer a new way for content creators and media companies to bring their virtual characters to life.”
“I’ve long been fascinated by where the next generation of entertainment might take us,” said Chad Hurley, Co-founder and former CEO of YouTube. “And I believe that intelligent, virtual characters—like the kind you can make with Artie’s platform—will play a key role in how we create and interact with content.”
“Artie is at the forefront of making the future of entertainment more personal for consumers,” said Cyan Banister, Partner at Founders Fund. “Ryan, Armando and team have the strong technical approach and vision needed to help lead the growth of consumer AR.”
Artie has already cemented partnerships with Google and Verizon for early experiments with its technology and is beginning to onboard major media companies, celebrities, influencers, and an emerging class of avatar-based entertainment creators.
About Artie:
Artie is a technology company focused on artificial intelligence and augmented reality. The company’s software makes it easy to create and share virtual characters, known as intelligent avatars. Powered by advanced natural language processing, machine learning, computer vision, and sentiment analysis, each intelligent avatar is fully autonomous and capable of fun and engaging interactions with consumers. Artie’s mission is to bring consumers’ favorite characters to life in AR by enabling content creators, media companies, celebrities, and influencers to produce and monetize a new form of content based on intelligent avatars. Founded by AR/VR and entertainment industry veterans, Ryan Horriganand Armando Kirwin, the company is backed by top strategic investors including: Founders Fund, The Venture Reality Fund, WndrCo, M Ventures, Metaverse Ventures (a DCG company), YouTube Co-founder and former CEO Chad Hurley, notable angel investor Cyan Banister, and Ubiquity6 Co-founder and CEO Anjney Midha.
