I first met Mark Drummond, CEO of Pixi, and his team over two years ago, and was enthralled by his vision for a new, constructive style of messaging. His pedigree working with Apple, combined with his deep knowledge of 3D and AR, meant I knew I was going to be a huge fan of his work. Today that vision becomes real for everyone: Pixi Platforms has launched Pixi Garden on the App Store.
So what is a “pixi”?
A pixi is an intelligent, interactive AR character that you send to a friend, right inside iMessage. It is not an emoji, a GIF, or a filter. You create it, you send it, and when it arrives it comes to life on the recipient’s phone, the device already in everyone’s pocket.
This is a pixi in action, this is agentic media.
Mark’s team calls this agentic media: the convergence of messaging, gaming, augmented reality, and AI. Each pixi is powered by an on-device “AI brain” with machine-learning sensors that watch the environment, pay attention to the user, and listen to what’s going on. So the character actually reacts to the world it lands in. A virtual cat notices when a real dog walks past. Whether it’s a cat, a robot, or a licensed character, the pixi can respond, explore, guide a little game, tell a joke, or carry a short message, turning an ordinary text into a moment your friends will actually remember.
As Mark puts it, “Pixi turns everyday messages into moments your friends and family will actually remember.” That is exactly the constructive spirit that hooked me two years ago.
Privacy is the foundation, not an afterthought
The part I love most as an engineer: it all runs on-device. Every pixi is driven by on-device ML models, so nothing leaves your iPhone and nothing is used to train AI models. You don’t even need an account to play a pixi someone sends you; you only sign in if you want to direct and send your own. In an era where so much of our communication is quietly harvested, this is a refreshing, principled stance.
A platform, not just an app
Pixi Garden is the first step toward something bigger. The long-term vision is a platform layer for agentic media, with a marketplace where studios, brands, and independent creators can distribute their characters as shareable, interactive experiences, complete with per-send economics and the brand-safe guardrails IP owners need. Think of what Roblox did for user-generated games, or what the App Store did for mobile software, but for intelligent characters that travel between people the way photos and videos do today.
That future is already attracting serious partners. Framestore, the studio behind some of the most beloved visual effects in film, is both an investor and co-development partner, exploring this “on-device AI” frontier alongside the team.
Go send one
Pixi Garden is available now on iPhone and iPad via the App Store, with more messaging platforms on the way.
I’ve been lucky to watch this come together from an early vision to a shipping product, and it’s every bit as constructive and joyful as Mark first described it to me. That culminated in today’s general release of the Pixi Garden app. Check it out, and send messages to your friends on it!