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Daimler Invests in New Zealand HMI Firm

Daimler AG is making an unspecified investment in Soul Machines Ltd., a New Zealand-based company that specializes in digital personal assistant systems.

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Daimler AG is making an unspecified investment in Soul Machines Ltd., a New Zealand-based company that specializes in digital personal assistant systems.

The companies demonstrated the technology in February at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona with “Sarah,” a digital avatar (pictured) developed by Soul Machines. The personal assistant also answered frequently asked questions during an internal pilot at a Mercedes-Benz call center in the U.S.

Daimler’s financial and mobility services plans to use Sarah to assist customers. This includes issues related to car financing, leasing and insurance, car-sharing and ride-hailing.

Soul Machines, which was founded in 2016, says its technology adds “emotional” attributes to traditional artificial intelligence to improve human to machine interactions. This allows Sarah to go beyond current voice-based systems, such as Amazon.com’s popular Alexa system, to provide life-like, emotionally responsive and recognize non-verbal cues through facial recognition technology, according to the developer.  

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