Exclusive: New startup builds digital pets for Apple's Vision Pro
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Bootloader Studio CEO Bryan Pelz and Tim Cook. Photo: Apple
A new startup is coming out of stealth with a plan to offer digital pets for the Apple Vision Pro that use AI to read and respond to human emotion.
Why it matters: AIs designed to play digital characters or inhabit physical robots will need some form of emotional intelligence to interact with people — so the race is now on to develop AI that can read your feelings.
The big picture: Vietnam-based Bootloader Studio aims to combine AI and spatial computing to change the way humans interact with technology, Bryan Pelz, Bootloader's founder and CEO, told Axios.
- A true digital friend needs to be able to judge your mood, and build on your body language, Pelz said.
- Pelz demonstrated the product to Axios via video rather than on the Vision Pro.
What they're saying: Tim Cook recently plugged the company as a "fantastic" example of Vietnam's developer community.
Flashback: Pelz says he was inspired to start Bootloader Studio during the COVID-19 pandemic, when he realized the limits of current social media and virtual reality in meeting our need to interact with other people.
- "I became keenly aware of what people do when they're isolated from other people," Pelz told Axios. "Endless scrolling, you know, endless consumption of social data about people .. .but the fact is that we're wired for, we're geared for interaction, not passive consumption."
The digital pet product has been in development since 2022 and was tested on a pre-launch version of the Vision Pro in 2023.
How it works: "[We] look at things like your attention, your head position, gyroscope, tone of voice, content of speech, cadence of speech, volume," Pelz says.
- "Are you moving closer or further away? Are you gesturing? Are you touching something? We're really exercising every corner of this device."
Between the lines: Pelz says the studio intentionally chose an AI pet as its first companion rather than an AI replica of a human.
- "I felt like we didn't want to have a companion that speaks to you because it's just fraught with all sorts of issues there," Pelz told Axios. "And I want to make people feel better — so I didn't want to give them Alexa or Siri."
- Bootloader's pet companions won't exist in a siloed-off application for the Vision Pro — instead, they will operate as services present alongside all the other apps you use.
- "In Vision Pro, you can not only have windows coexisting with you in your physical space, you can have digital characters that are coexisting with you," Pelz explains.
Zoom out: Pets powered by AI that claim to respond to you have a long pedigree.
- Sony's robot dog AIBO — which stands for "Artificial Intelligence roBOt"— was first introduced 25 years ago.
- The handheld digital pets called Tamagotchi have been around since the late '90s.
By the numbers: Bootloader Studio is emerging from stealth with $5 million in seed funding, led by Antler Elevate.
What we're watching: Bootloader's digital pets are still in user testing, but the company hopes to launch the service for Vision Pro this summer.
Editor's note: This story has been corrected to reflect that the digital pet product has been in development since 2022 (not 2023) and was tested on the Vision Pro in 2023.
