Trulience was born out of a deeply personal experience, inspired by one of its co-founders’ concerns about his grandmother’s loneliness in a care home.
Witnessing the limitations in elderly care sparked the idea of using AI to address human connection gaps. In an interview with
Website Planet, Trulience’s mission is described as humanizing AI by giving it a face and body, bringing a sense of empathy and engagement to both personal and professional interactions.
By offering lifelike avatars, Trulience aims to enhance workplace culture and customer experiences, making technology feel more human.
What inspired the creation of Trulience and what is its core mission?
Sure. Trulience has an interesting origin story. One of the co-founders was deeply impacted by his experience with his grandmother, who was living in a care home. While the facility itself wasn’t bad, the challenges of an aging demographic and a shortage of caregivers left his grandmother lacking companionship and attention. The thought of her sitting there, somewhat alone, became a thorn in his side. He started thinking, “What if there was technology that could help change that?” This idea became one of the seeds of Trulience.
At its core, Trulience’s mission is to humanize artificial intelligence by giving AI a face and a body. It’s interesting when you look back— not to the very beginnings of computing with Charles Babbage, but a bit later to Alan Turing, a key figure in the evolution of computing. One of the driving forces behind Turing’s work was the vision that, one day, computers might bring back lost loved ones. He had lost a childhood friend and dreamed of using technology to somehow resurrect that connection.
This idea of humanizing machines has always been present, and it continues today. The heart of Trulience lies in this concept—using AI to foster human connection in meaningful ways.
How does Trulience help businesses enhance their employee engagement and workplace culture?
Trulience, at its core, is a tool designed to leverage both knowledge and a workforce. Every business has a wealth of internal knowledge—whether that’s stored in a company wiki, on a platform like Notion, or elsewhere. With the rise of large language models, especially since the prominence of ChatGPT by OpenAI, we’ve seen new possibilities emerge. Now, it’s possible to train a language model on a company’s knowledge base.
For instance, when a new employee joins an organization, they have countless questions. While human interaction is vital, sometimes employees may not want to constantly interrupt their managers or colleagues for answers. What if they could turn to a virtual company companion—a tool that could help them understand the company’s ethos, client base, or even how they should approach their work? This is where AI steps in, acting as both a knowledge base and a coach. With tools like ChatGPT, this can be done through text input, and now even audio input.
However, what we’ve noticed is that there’s often a missing piece: the human element. That’s why Trulience introduces a face to the AI—whether it’s a human or even a fun, interactive avatar—adding a level of human-like interaction to the experience. This goes beyond simply typing into a chatbot. It creates a more engaging and relatable experience for employees.
This approach is not just limited to internal operations. Externally, it plays a significant role in customer service as well. If you think of chatbots and avatars, they are, in essence, high-level customer service agents. They handle teaching, relaying information, coaching, therapy, and even brand interactions with customers, often serving as the first point of contact.
In this way, Trulience helps businesses augment their workforce and enhance both employee engagement and workplace culture. It supports employees internally while also strengthening external customer interactions, creating a more humanized AI experience across various applications.
What unique features or services set Trulience apart from other employee engagement platforms?
This is quite an interesting question because employee engagement platforms vary widely, from reward schemes to employee tracking and benefits hubs. While these elements are important, I believe the more appropriate comparison is between Trulience and other interactive avatar technologies currently available.
Avatars typically fall into two categories. On one side, there are static avatars that can be programmed to speak but do not allow for interactive conversations. You can input text, and the avatar will respond, but the interaction is one-directional. On the other side, we have interactive avatars, and this is where Trulience truly excels.
Interactive avatars represent the cutting edge of this technology, but they present unique challenges, particularly regarding latency. For a conversation to feel natural, the response time needs to be incredibly low. When people engage in conversation, they pick up on body language, audio cues, and the concept of turn-taking, which young children often learn. At Trulience, we recognize that achieving this low latency is crucial for our interactive avatars to meet the acceptable threshold of conversation.
From discussions with our customers who have explored our competitors, a common refrain is that we deliver a real solution. We conduct live demos and consistently receive positive feedback, proving that our technology passes the test.
Another distinguishing feature is our cost-effectiveness, particularly regarding scalability. While you might see avatars deployed in shopping malls or train stations, those scenarios can be costly. The technology we’ve developed allows each avatar to render directly on the user’s machine in their browser instead of relying on cloud rendering. This means that even if hundreds or thousands of people are interacting with the avatar on a company’s website at the same time, it remains cost-effective. If the rendering were done in the cloud, expenses could quickly spiral out of control.
Ultimately, what sets Trulience apart is our ability to provide infinitely scalable solutions at an affordable price, which has proven to be highly appealing to our customers.
Can you share a success story where Trulience significantly improved a company’s employee satisfaction?
Certainly! One notable success story involves our collaboration with a local government in the state of Rajasthan, India. They approached us with a significant challenge: engaging a vast illiterate population to help them access healthcare services.
To address this issue, we deployed AI-powered interactive avatars across 11 different healthcare settings throughout Rajasthan. These avatars were displayed on screens, allowing individuals—whether illiterate or not—to approach and engage in conversation with a visual human representation. While the avatars did not provide diagnoses, they were able to signpost the appropriate steps for accessing healthcare. For instance, they could guide users on where to go, whom to see, and what actions to take next.
This use case was particularly enlightening, as it highlighted the scale of the challenge; there are over 700 million illiterate people worldwide. While providing interactive, linguistically capable avatars is not a comprehensive solution and does not address the root issue of education, it does offer an immediate way to bridge the gap in healthcare access.
Though this example isn’t directly related to employee engagement, it demonstrates our commitment to social good and the positive impact technology can have on underserved populations.
How does Trulience ensure the effectiveness and relevance of its engagement strategies?
That’s a great question! At Trulience, we work closely with our clients, whom we refer to as partners. Our approach is not simply to provide a product and move on; instead, we see our collaboration as a shared journey of exploration. It’s essential for us to ensure that our partners succeed and can effectively integrate our solutions into their environments for ongoing use.
This commitment to partnership is a core aspect of our internal company culture. We focus on positioning ourselves as a solution to the specific problems our partners face, which vary case by case. For example, in a healthcare setting, we might measure the number of interactions with our avatars and assess changes in engagement levels among the population. In contrast, in an e-commerce environment, we look at metrics such as the conversion rate of visitors to buyers, the average transaction size, and customer retention rates.
Ultimately, each use case presents its own unique set of metrics, but our goal remains consistent: to be a key partner in navigating this novel and innovative technology.
What new features or developments is Trulience planning to introduce?
At Trulience, we’re in a crucial phase of continuously enhancing our software. As with any technology, we’re focused on both introducing new features and refining our existing core products. We’re dedicated to staying ahead of emerging technologies and leveraging the best elements of our tech stack.
For example, we collaborate with a video rendering company that ensures near-zero global latency in streaming. This partnership is vital as it helps us improve our technology by utilizing their advancements. Similarly, we are constantly exploring new developments in voice technology, with exciting updates expected soon.
Our goal is to provide best-in-class interactive avatar technology that operates affordably at scale, offering lifelike, real-time AI-powered interactions. We’re committed to enhancing this experience every day, moving it from “this is great” to “this can significantly augment our entire workforce.”
We encourage everyone to stay tuned for ongoing enhancements and to experience our offerings firsthand. If you haven’t already, you can sign up for a free avatar trial at
Trulience.com.
