Artie (company)

Artie is a software development company that was founded by Armando Kirwin and Ryan Horrigan and is headquartered in Los Angeles, California. The company offers a platform called "Wonderfriend" for the creation of smart phone based augmented reality digital avatars.

Wonderfriend's digital avatars share insights and analytics in real time using advanced machine learning, natural language processing, computer vision, and sentiment analysis, allowing the avatars to become more engaging over time. Users are able to create avatars that are designed after celebrities, popular fictional characters, and influencers. Establishing a personality for each avatar is possible, and the avatar will interact based on the given traits. The platform also allows them to share these avatars, which are emotionally, object, and world-aware.

Although the algorithms and artificial intelligence that Artie has developed aren't considered to be general artificial intelligence, the avatars are considered narrow artificial intelligence. The application trains the artificial intelligence to be empathetic, and catch small changes in tonality. The augmented reality can help users learn how to communicate more effectively through virtual simulations.

Artie has backing from investors such as YouTube co-founder, Chad Hurley, Founders Fund, DCG, and many others.