A company that got its start bringing digital characters to life in the movies has announced the launch of a “digital workforce” platform backed by AI-enabled agents. Soul Machines, which brands itself as “humanizing AI,” rolled out Digital Workforce this week, aimed at large enterprise clients, including healthcare organizations.
How it works:
- Human-like interactions: Soul Machines says its digital workers can see, listen, and even empathize, offering more natural engagement than traditional chatbots.
- Healthcare use cases: Appointment schedulers, billing administrators, prescription educators, and clinical trial onboarding specialists.
- HR & sales: Interviewers, onboarding coaches, performance trainers, or lead engagement agents that integrate directly with CRM and HR systems.
- Learning & coaching: Users can create persona types to practice negotiating, selling, or communicating, while the AI tracks sentiment and progress.
Chief Product Officer Darren Wilson said the goal is not just automation but deploying empathetic digital workers that “understand context, interact naturally and deliver tangible business outcomes at scale.”
The bigger picture:
- Hollywood roots: Founded in 2016 by Greg Cross and Oscar winner Mark Sagar, Soul Machines first made waves designing digital characters for Avatar, Spider-Man 2, and King Kong.
- Enterprise expansion: A 2022 partnership with Microsoft accelerated its global reach. That same year, the company raised $70 million in a SoftBank-led round, bringing total funding to $135 million.
- Competitive field: Salesforce’s Agentforce also promises a digital workforce, but Soul Machines’ emphasis is on lifelike, face-to-face digital personas.
For companies in the credit and collection industry, Soul Machines’ Digital Workforce underscores the industry’s next frontier: empathetic, human-like agents designed to blend customer service with advanced orchestration across enterprise systems The upside? Improved consumer engagement and reduced operational costs. The risk? Ensuring these AI-powered “workers” remain compliant, transparent, and trustworthy in high-stakes financial interactions.
