Intelligent agents such as Amazon’s Alexa or Apple’s Siri have quickly become part of our everyday life providing information, entertainment, and support for modern living. As we look to a future filled with robots, augmented and virtual reality – digital assistants will evolve into living characters (at Embodied, we call them Animates) sharing our world and providing an emotionally empathetic point of view through a blend of animation, real-time sensory data, artificial intelligence and predictive behavior modeling based on feedback from the communities they serve. Such “living characters” will provide an ability to form a much more personal connection with customers and audiences at global scale. This presentation explores some of the challenges and exciting opportunities at hand as we create emotionally intelligent characters offering a more lifelike interface to our world as brand ambassadors, trusted advisors, playmates and companions for life.