By Allan Maurer
BOCA RATON, FL—Peter Hodge blistered his friend Eric Rand at tennis a few years ago and afterward, both lamented the recent heart attack loss of another buddy who usually joined them Sunday mornings on the court. “I asked what he had to remember him by, we talked about it, and the idea for Virsona grew from that,” says Hodge.
The company uses artificial intelligence to build relationships between people and virtual personas that may be historical, brand related, or personal.
The personal first interested Hodge and Rand, who lamented that their former friend was not with them that Sunday to kid Rand about losing. But the concept evolved from there.
Hodge, CEO, and Rand, president of the company invested about $50,000 each to “See if we could do it,” says Hodge. “We got feedback and ideas and began to understand what our opportunity was. We both put in a little more, then started raising money in January this year.”
Rand, who worked in finance, drew upon his connections to help Virsona raise a $3 million private investor round. “Eric’s background allowed us to do that,” says Hodge. “You don’t have to give up as much as you do going the venture capital route.”
Beta launched this week
Rands has nearly 20 years of experience in capital markets as well as public and private securities markets.
During his career, Rand has led and participated in the raising of approximately $300 million in private placements and funding of public companies and has structured and participated in initial public offerings for companies listed on The NASDAQ Stock Market and the American Stock Exchange.
Virsona launched its Beta Web site this week. It has considerably expanded the potential of the initial idea of creating a place where users could create a Virsona version of themselves through a combination of digital elements and the company’s proprietary artificial intelligence engine.
The company Web site explains it this way:
“Virsonas are virtual personas created to reason, remember and react just like a living, historical or fictional character. You can create the Virtual You as a Personal Virsona or participate with our community Virsonas and talk to your heroes, do research or simply have fun! Create Virsonas for your pet, departed loved ones or for common shared experiences.”
How did you meet Romeo?
“Imagine being able to give advice to a great, great grandchild this way,” suggests Hodge. “You can create your own digital immortality from precious moments of your life, build it like an archive and invite people to share at whatever privacy level you prefer.”
It offers the possibility of encounters such as asking a question of a friend not physically present, of interacting with an historical figure such as Abraham Lincoln or others discussed in classrooms.
“I tried it with my daughter,” says Hodge. “Her class was reading Romeo & Juliet.” So, he had a Virsona of Juliet created. “Tell me about the first time you met Romeo,” his daughter asked.
“I met him at a party my father threw,” Juliet replied. It was powerful watching her have an online conversation with the character, Hodge says. The company sees education as one of several areas where the technology will find uses.
“We hired a couple of teachers to help us do this right,” he says.
Bringing AI out of the lab
Other ways the company may make money, he says, in addition to highly targeted advertising, include helping companies bring brands to life. “Say a new Star Trek movie is coming out at Christmas. You could have a Virsona of Captain Kirk interact with consumers, answering their questions.
That could be additionally commercialized via a subtle injection of brands, almost like product placement or as in the film “The Truman Show.” If a consumer asks Captain Kirk what he likes to eat, explains Hodge, he might reply hot dogs and ask if the questioner likes a certain brand.
“That’s the business to business side,” says Hodge.
The company also sees potential in licensing its AI engine and in offering premium services with extra features. One major area of potential revenue is doing analytics on the conversations people have with brand-related Virsonas, he adds.
The company has pulled together an impressive board of advisors. They include Yorick Wilkes, professor of artificial intelligence and director of the Institute for Language, Speech and Hearing at University of Sheffield, England, who holds numerous prestigious awards in the area of AI and has been involved in its advancement since 1970.
They heard David Levy, CEO of Intelligent Toys Ltd, a London-based company that develops toys that incorporate AI also an advisory board member, on the radio and called him up. He liked the Virsona idea enough to want to be part of the team, says Hodge.
Levy has received the prestigious Loebner Prize, an award given to those who further the advancement of “thinking” computers, which are those whose responses to questions are indistinguishable from a human’s in a so-called Turing Test (named after famed British mathematician Alan Turing, who proposed it).
Leslie Sokol, Ph.D., currently sits on the board of the internationally acclaimed Beck Institute in Philadelphia. She has taught cognitive therapy to groups, nationally and internationally and maintains a private practice.
One of the main ideas of Virsona, however, is to get AI out of the academic circles and into a Web 2.0 environment. “We want to bring it out of the lab,” says Hodge. “We want to give atavars in the virtual world artificial intelligence, not just a skin.”
On the Web: www.virsona.com
Southeast Venture Conference, February 29 – March 1, 2012 at the Ritz Carlton in Tysons Corner, VA – Where Smart Money Meets Smart People.
www.seventure.org
© 2008, TechJournal South. All rights reserved.
