Dive Brief:
- AppDirect acquired Soul Machines, a venture-backed startup that creates hyper-realistic AI avatars, on Monday. The B2B commerce platform provider aims to help channel partners, consultants and businesses deploy more interactive AI experiences across sales, service, support and commerce, according to an announcement.
- Soul Machine’s technology has applications in AI-based software user and customer experience interfaces, as well as in self-service, training and onboarding platforms. It will be integrated with AppDirect’s Devs.ai platform, which offers vibe-coding tools and access to multiple large language models.
- “The value of this technology is that it represents the next step in making AI more intuitive,” Chris Herd, general manager at Soul Machines, said in an email. “Instead of relying only on prompts or text-based workflows, businesses can now interact with AI in more natural, conversational ways through text, voice and virtual human interfaces. For partners and advisors, this creates a new way to differentiate in the AI market.”
Dive Insight:
Soul Machines was co-founded in 2016 by director and producer Mark Sagar, who previously worked as a facial technology and visual effects engineer on blockbusters such as “Avatar” and “King Kong.” Sagar’s startup uses patented autonomous animation to “humanize AI” and create animated digital teammates that can see, hear and respond to prompts in real time, Herd said.
“Until recently, compute costs and latency kept lifelike, real-time AI out of reach for broad commercial adoption,” Sagar said. “Those barriers are now collapsing and with the integration to Devs.ai, this technology is now available through the channel.”
For partners, lifelike AI is a potential business opportunity, though the credibility of AI avatars remains unclear. A recent study of AI avatars in the classroom found no significant differences in short-term learning gains, and that students preferred human teachers. Users have also reported a phenomenon known as the “uncanny valley,” the unsettling experience of interacting with not-quite-human avatars.
Soul Machines is AppDirect’s third major acquisition in recent months. Last week, the company bought telecoms provider CCI Network Services. In April, AppDirect added relationship management platform PartnerStack to its portfolio.
As AI adoption moves from experimentation to implementation, AppDirect is one of many companies seeking to build trustworthy AI interfaces for customers and partners.
Devs.ai provides access to over 100 LLMs, AI software and applications and secure workspaces to build and manage business AI tools. Channel partners will soon be able to access Soul Machines technology through the platform, according to the announcement.
