Portalis.AI aims to alter AI-human interaction with customizable digital avatars

01.11.2023 - 13:23 / venturebeat.com / Ai

Portalis.AI has emerged from stealth mode to unveil its avatars that are aimed at enhancing interaction and communication between humans and AI.

The Austin, Texas-based startup has created AI characters who can hold a conversation with you as well as their lifelike, fully interactive, and animated digital avatars.

With the world increasingly intertwined with AI and digital beings, Portalis.AI is creating a platform that empowers creators to design, personalize, share, and engage with AI-powered digital avatars, complete with integrated voice, video, and memory capabilities – a significant leap beyond the chat-based avatars available today, said Todd Coleman, cofounder of Portalis.AI, in an interview with GamesBeat.

The company is the brainchild of serial entrepreneurs Coleman and Josef Hall, who had a lot of success with prior game companies. The duo is known for their pioneering work in the massively-multiplayer online role-playing game MMORPG genre, notably the creation of the immensely popular MMORPG franchise Wizard101 for KingsIsle Entertainment. The franchise was later acquired by Gamigo/Media & Games Invest in 2021 for over $200 million and continues to be enjoyed by millions worldwide.

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Coleman was also behind the team that created Crowfall, which was a new MMO that debuted in 2021. Coleman’s company, Artcraft, was acquired by Monumental, which then shut down Crowfall in 2022. After that happened, Coleman started investigating AI.

“I felt like I needed a break from MMOs. I heard a podcast about AI. I thought this was really fascinating. And I mentioned it to Joseph our CTO. And I mentioned to him how I thought this stuff was really interesting. And I bought a book on AI. I couldn’t understand it at all,” Coleman said.

They went through a couple of AI training programs at the University of Texas at Austin and Carnegie Mellon University so they could understand it better. That set them up for Portalis.AI. They started the company and then the generative AI boom started.

“We thought there was a really interesting intersection between game technology and AI technology,” Coleman said. “A lot of the game companies hadn’t really looked deeply into it as we had. And the AI companies didn’t have the background and skills with our timeline, character, modeling texturing, all that. So we thought that would be really interesting opportunities where we were looking.”

Portalis.AI brings to life articulate, fully-animated avatars with customizable looks, voices, environments, animations,