Helika today launched Helika Evolve, a platform that allows brands to bring their recognizable characters to life using AI, creating personalized points of contact for fans across channels such as websites, Discord, X, and other social networks. Evolve turns a brand's mascot into an interactive persona that engages with fans, remembers them, and cultivates relationships that earn trust at scale.
According to Helika, customers buy from brands they trust, and trust is built over time through interaction and experience. Advertising buys attention but does not foster the connection necessary for trust. Evolve provides brands with a means to earn trust through conversation. The platform enables brands to give their characters a tailored voice, mannerisms, and knowledge base that reflect the brand's values while remaining engaging. These characters meet fans where they are, responding to their needs with emotion, opinions, memory, and the ability to build genuine relationships, unlike mechanical question-and-answer bots.
Research cited by Helika underscores the impact of brand characters. Campaigns built around a character are 37% more likely to grow market share and 30% more likely to grow profit, according to System1 and the IPA. Mascots that recur over years perform even better, with such campaigns being 73% more likely to post a major rise in profit, per the IPA. In an era where consumers tune out ads, characters can reach fans through conversation. Nielsen found that 92% of consumers trust a recommendation from someone they know over advertising, and Edelman reported that 84% say a personal recommendation influences their purchasing decisions. A character that becomes a fan's companion can offer advice instead of a sales pitch.
Brands maintain control over their characters across all channels. Every aspect of a character's personality can be adjusted in real time, including knowledge, memory, and scope. Guardrails set limits on what a character can say and interact with, and each brand chooses how its characters handle conflict. Brand safety is foundational to the platform. With this control, Evolve manages the entire relationship: the character greets new fans, learns their interests, and guides them to relevant content. It remains present after the initial interaction, reaching out to inactive fans, picking up past conversations, and providing reasons for regulars to return. Each exchange provides insights back to the brand, such as community interests, sentiment trends, and which conversations lead to action.
Helika tested Evolve in live communities, where fans moved beyond initial curiosity to repeat conversations. They returned, continued previous interactions, and stayed engaged long after the first exchange. The pilot confirmed that fans form lasting relationships with a character that can engage with them. "Interactive AI characters represent a new category of fan engagement," said Anton Umnov, founder and CEO of Helika. "Brands have spent years building recognition through mascots and characters. Helika transforms those characters into intelligent AI companions that can engage audiences, manage communities, and build trusted relationships at scale."
Helika is an AI character platform that helps brands and IP owners create interactive AI characters for engagement across websites, social media, and online communities. Founded three years ago in North America, the company serves more than 60 studios, including Nexon, Ubisoft, Yuga Labs, and Com2Us, and has co-designed projects with Ubisoft. Helika has raised $15 million from investors including Sagard, Pantera Capital, Animoca Brands, Fenbushi Capital, and Big Brain Holdings. More information is available at https://www.helika.io.
