Apple quietly acquired 3D avatar firm TrueMeeting in January, which may assist bolster the corporate’s digital Personas on Imaginative and prescient Professional.
French language outlet MacGeneration first noticed the information by way of a European Fee submitting, which features a non-confidential abstract of mergers and acquisitions.
Particulars of the acquisition are nonetheless skinny, nonetheless it seems Apple acquired the Tel Aviv and Silicon Valley-based firm in January 2025, acquiring its 3D avatar tech stack and hiring plenty of its workers.
Based in 2019 as CommonGround-AI, TrueMeeting developed an software that permits an individual to scan their face with a smartphone and interact in avatar-based video chats with or with out the necessity of an XR headset.
And it’s attainable we’ve already seen a few of the enhancements TrueMeeting has delivered to the desk in Apple’s newest iteration of Personas.
On the firm’s Worldwide Builders Convention (WWDC) in June, Apple introduced it was rolling out a big visible improve to its Persona avatars on Imaginative and prescient Professional in VisionOS 26. We went hands-on with the brand new, improved Personas, which is presently in developer preview and slated to reach on Imaginative and prescient Professional someday later this fall.
In our hands-on, Street to VR’s Ben Lang notes that “[s]kin seems way more detailed; I used to be significantly impressed with the way it captured my stubble. Hair on the pinnacle is extra detailed too.”
Persevering with: “However possibly much more than that, Apple’s Persona system captures the movement of the face with spectacular element. You’ll be able to see me shifting my face in unusual and asymmetrical methods, however the outcomes nonetheless look nuanced and real looking.”
Moreover, MacGeneration found that Apple additionally acquired AI startup WhyLabs, which develops and operates instruments to watch and analyze machine studying fashions and knowledge pipelines. Basically, WhyLabs screens generative AI in order that they don’t overstep bounds, monitoring for real-time drifts, hallucinations, and different bugs of conversational AI.