partnership · March 20, 2026
By Joe Jurczyk, Editor
Genies and Sanrio partner on AI-enabled character experiences
Sanrio is bringing its character portfolio into interactive AI experiences built on Genies' avatar stack, starting with gudetama and expanding to Hello Kitty and others later in 2026.
Genies and Sanrio announced a collaboration to build interactive, AI-enabled digital experiences around Sanrio characters. The rollout begins with gudetama, with Hello Kitty, My Melody, Kuromi and others from Sanrio's 400-plus character portfolio to follow later in 2026.
The experiences are built on Genies' proprietary AI avatar technology stack. Both companies emphasised that human creators will individually build and supervise every character model, with Sanrio retaining full oversight to preserve character authenticity.
Platforms, pricing, technical specifications and geographic availability were not stated in the announcement.
Why it matters for digital humans: Licensed character IP is one of the clearer near-term commercial paths for avatar technology, and the stated insistence on human supervision of each character model is a notable constraint on how far the automation goes.
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