Artem Rodichev is the Founder and CEO of Ex-human, an organization centered on constructing empathetic AI characters for partaking conversations. Earlier than founding Ex-human, Artem was the Head of AI at Replika from 2017 to 2021, the place he led the event one of the common English-speaking chatbots, rising its consumer base to 10 million within the U.S.
You spent a number of years as Head of AI at Replika, constructing one of the common conversational AIs. What impressed you to go away and located Ex-human, and the way did your expertise at Replika affect your imaginative and prescient for Ex-human?
Throughout my time at Replika, I had the chance to assist form a conversational AI that resonated with hundreds of thousands of customers, which gave me deep perception into how individuals join with know-how on an emotional degree. As rewarding because it was, I at all times felt there was extra potential for AI past what we have been constructing. I noticed a chance to broaden AI’s potential throughout a number of sectors and use circumstances.
At Replika, the main focus was totally on making a companion AI, however I started to ascertain how conversational AI might be built-in into various functions, providing customized, emotionally clever interactions for a wide selection of use circumstances — from leisure to enterprise. That realization sparked the thought for Ex-Human, the place we intention to develop AI know-how that not solely gives companionship but additionally powers modern experiences for companies and shoppers alike.
Ex-Human was born from the need to push the boundaries of AI even additional, making it extra adaptive, partaking, and able to reworking how individuals work together with digital characters throughout varied industries.
Ex-human makes use of AI avatars to have interaction hundreds of thousands of customers. Are you able to clarify how your AI avatars are designed to be empathetic and responsive?
We’ve spent loads of time refining how our AI characters work together with customers, making certain that they’re not simply reactive however actually conscious of the emotional tone of the dialog. A method we do that is by coaching our fashions on hundreds of thousands of open-domain conversations, permitting them to learn to interact in a manner that feels pure and emotionally conscious.
The aim is to make customers really feel understood and heard. These characters aren’t simply programmed to offer solutions; they’re designed to foster genuine interactions. They choose up on delicate emotional cues and reply in ways in which really feel human-like and comforting. That’s why our customers spend important time interacting with them.
Past simply textual content, our avatars are able to multi-modal interactions. They will reply with voice, ship contextual pictures, and even video, which provides a layer of richness and depth to the conversations. This number of interplay types helps customers really feel extra immersed within the expertise and allows them to construct full tales with the AI characters. On the finish of the day, we intention to create AI that goes past normal interactions, providing customers a deeply partaking, emotionally clever expertise that retains them returning.
How does the information collected out of your B2C platform botify.ai affect the coaching and improvement of your AI fashions?
With hundreds of thousands of customers partaking in conversations with all kinds of characters on our platform, we’re in a position to gather an unlimited quantity of real-world interplay knowledge. This helps us perceive not solely how customers talk, but additionally what makes these interactions emotionally significant.
By analyzing this knowledge, we’re in a position to fine-tune our fashions to be extra responsive and empathetic. It’s a steady cycle: consumer interactions present insights, permitting us to fine-tune and evolve the AI. This strategy permits us to enhance the conversational circulate, tone, and the general emotional intelligence of our avatars.
In essence, our B2C platform is a type of real-time testing floor. The information we gather allows us to consistently evolve and adapt our AI to fulfill consumer expectations, and people enhancements straight affect how we develop our B2B options as effectively. It’s how we make sure that our AI stays not solely cutting-edge but additionally deeply human in its interactions.
How does Ex-human guarantee knowledge privateness and moral AI practices whereas utilizing giant quantities of consumer knowledge for coaching functions?
Knowledge privateness and moral AI practices are our high priorities, particularly given the quantities of consumer knowledge we work with. At the start, we make sure that all knowledge is anonymized earlier than it’s used for any coaching or evaluation. This implies private identifiers are eliminated, so the information can’t be traced again to particular person customers, defending their privateness all through the method.
We even have strict knowledge dealing with protocols in place. Customers’ knowledge isn’t used with out their consent, and we’re absolutely clear about how the information is collected and utilized. Moreover, we often assessment our practices to remain according to evolving knowledge safety legal guidelines and moral pointers.
Relating to coaching our AI, we place a powerful emphasis on making certain that our fashions behave in a accountable and unbiased manner. By consistently monitoring and testing our AI, we work to forestall any unintended biases from showing in our interactions. This mixture of privateness safeguards and moral AI improvement ensures that we are able to ship emotionally clever and responsive AI with out compromising consumer belief or safety.
Ex-human’s avatars have considerably increased consumer engagement than platforms like Instagram. What’s the important thing to reaching such excessive ranges of consumer interplay?
The important thing lies within the emotional responsiveness – it’s what retains customers coming again and spending extra time interacting with our avatars.
One other issue is the extent of customization and personalization we provide. Customers can create and work together with all kinds of AI characters, every with its personal distinctive persona and elegance. Whether or not it’s chatting with a fictional character or creating a totally personalized avatar, customers really feel extra concerned and linked to the expertise, making it rather more partaking than merely scrolling via content material on social media platforms.
Moreover, our give attention to multimodal interactions, the place avatars reply with textual content, pictures, audio, and even video, provides to the immersive expertise. This makes customers really feel actively concerned in a story that adapts and grows with them, quite than passively consuming content material. All of those components collectively contribute to the upper ranges of engagement we see in comparison with social media platforms.
You’ve shaped partnerships with corporations like Grindr. How do companies profit from integrating Ex-human’s AI, and what measurable outcomes have they seen?
We permit companies to supply extra customized and fascinating consumer experiences. Our know-how allows them to construct characters that interact customers in considerate, pure conversations. For instance, within the case of Grindr, we’ve launched options like an AI wingman that helps customers enhance their profiles and a digital companion to follow relationship conversations. These options not solely make the platform extra partaking but additionally present sensible worth to customers.
By way of measurable outcomes, corporations have seen enhancements in consumer engagement and retention after integrating our AI options. This reveals how AI-driven characters can add actual worth to companies by creating deeper connections with customers.
How does your AI-driven engagement evaluate to conventional advertising and marketing strategies when it comes to buyer retention and conversion?
We’re in a position to provide one thing much more immersive and customized. Conventional advertising and marketing usually focuses on short-term consideration grabs or delivering static messages, however our platform is constructed round steady experiences—which permits for deeper engagement over time.
What actually units us aside is the extent of interplay. On common, customers spend over 60 minutes a day with our avatars, and our paying customers interact for even longer, exchanging a whole lot of messages. The mix of multimodal capabilities creates a way more partaking expertise, akin to an AI-powered Netflix, the place customers change into a part of the story. This goes past what conventional advertising and marketing can obtain.
How do you see the way forward for AI avatars and digital people reworking industries like customer support, healthcare, or leisure?
In customer support, they might deal with routine queries extra effectively whereas sustaining a excessive degree of consistency, liberating up human brokers to give attention to extra advanced points. This mix of automation and customized help can considerably enhance response occasions and general buyer satisfaction.
In healthcare, AI avatars may help with psychological well being help, providing companionship and even teaching, notably in eventualities the place human professionals are stretched skinny. They may be used to information sufferers via administrative processes, making healthcare extra accessible and fewer intimidating for individuals who may in any other case keep away from in search of assist.
In leisure, the chances are even broader. AI avatars can create completely new varieties of interactive content material, permitting customers to have interaction straight with characters in ways in which conventional media can’t provide. Whether or not it’s a sport, a digital live performance, and even digital influencers, AI can generate distinctive experiences which are tailor-made to particular person preferences, opening up new income streams for the business.
What key classes have you ever realized out of your transition from Head of AI at Replika to founding and scaling your individual firm?
A key lesson I’ve realized within the shift is how dramatically the function adjustments. As an engineer, I may dive deep into technical challenges and give attention to problem-solving, however as a founder, the scope expands considerably. All of a sudden, you’re not simply constructing know-how—you’re additionally managing groups, working with traders, making strategic choices, and making certain the corporate’s development on a number of fronts.
The hardest half was transferring from a hands-on, technical mindset to 1 that includes consistently switching between completely different roles and obligations. It’s much less about fixing one particular drawback and extra about managing every thing concurrently, all whereas protecting the general imaginative and prescient in sight. This broader perspective has been important for rising Ex-Human and navigating the entrepreneurial panorama.
Thanks for the good interview, readers who want to be taught extra ought to go to Ex-human.
