Today, Pixi Platforms, a social expression company, launched Pixi Garden, a messaging-native app that lets users send a “pixi”, an intelligent interactive AR character, directly via iMessage. These characters are not emojis, GIFs, or filters. Each pixi is an intelligent character created by users, sent to friends, designed to work with the phones already in everyone’s pockets.
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This is a pixi in action, this is agentic media.
A pixi is the convergence of messaging, gaming, augmented reality, and AI, also known as Agentic media. By reframing communications to make engagement adaptive, retain context, and integrate communicative intent, agentic media pixis are powered by an “AI brain” that enables behavior, interaction, and context awareness, and has machine-learning-based sensors to watch the environment and the user and to listen to what’s going on. Whether it’s a cat, a robot, or licensed IP, the characters pay attention and react to things that matter in the receiver’s environment. Once received, the character can respond, explore, guide a game, tell a joke, or share a short message, turning a simple personal message into a memorable, interactive moment.
“Pixi turns everyday messages into moments your friends and family will actually remember,” said Pixi Co-Founder and CEO Mark Drummond. “And for IP holders, we want to give them the power to have the world’s most beloved characters show up in a new way, not on a screen you watch, but interactive in the moment you’re living.”
Social expression has remained largely unchanged for decades, with each new entrant iterating on text, images, or short videos. Greeting cards have been sent in the mail for hundreds of years, and electronic greeting cards sent via email have been with us for decades. Even instant messaging, featuring text, images, and animated GIFs, has been around since the 1990s. Pixi revolutionizes social expression by providing an agentic media experience with intelligent interactive AR characters.
“Most communication today is still just text in a bubble,” said Roger Weber, co-founder and VP of Engineering. “With Pixi, we turn sending a message into a rich interactive experience.”
Platform Ambitions
The company’s long-term vision is to be a platform layer for agentic media, intelligent, perceptive characters that travel between people the way photos and videos do today, anchored by a marketplace where studios, brands, and creators can distribute their IP as shareable, interactive experiences. Where Roblox built the marketplace for user-generated games, and the App Store built the distribution layer for mobile software, Pixi is building the equivalent layer for agentic characters: a creator economy with per-send economics, brand-safe guardrails that IP owners control, and a distribution model where every send action is an invitation rather than an impression. The goal is a platform where Hollywood-grade IP characters, independent creators, and brand mascots all live on the same platform, and where the unit of value is not static views, but interaction frequency and duration.
Framestore, a Pixi investor and co-development partner, is already building toward that future.
“At Framestore, we work at the cutting edge of creativity and technology, building tomorrow’s signature experiences on all platforms. AI is heading to the edge where privacy and personalization can be maximized, and we want to ensure our clients can engage and leverage these new capabilities. We are working with Pixi to explore this emerging frontier of ‘on-device AI,’ certain that it will drive new compelling consumer experiences,” said Lincoln Wallen, Chief Technology Officer at Framestore.
Availability and Privacy
Pixi Garden app is now available on iOS and iPadOS via the App Store, with other messaging platforms coming soon. To play a pixi, no login or registration is required. For users who want to direct and send their own custom pixi, login is required. https://apps.apple.com/us/app/Pixi-garden/id6550889582
With Pixi, all user information stays on the user’s iPhone. Nothing leaves the device, and nothing gets used to train AI models. With Pixi, all user data belongs to the individual. All services are provided through on-device ML models, ensuring both excellent performance and end-user privacy.
About Pixi Platforms
Pixi Platforms is a startup building the next layer of social expression: intelligent 3D characters anyone can author on their phone and send through their preferred messaging app. Founded by Mark Drummond (a Siri co-founder and AI researcher) and Roger Weber, a veteran of large-scale game development, Pixi combines decades of expertise in machine learning, real-time graphics, and interactive storytelling. The company was co-founded by the AI Fund and is backed by the AI Fund, Framestore, Inc., Newmay Ventures, and a variety of successful entrepreneurs and angels in and around Silicon Valley.
Learn more at sendpixi.com.
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