Soul App Founder Team’s Decade-Long Commitment to Emotional Value: Reimagining Youth Social Experience Through AI
Against the backdrop of ongoing digital transformation, social interaction is undergoing profound changes. As one of China’s earliest platforms to explore AI-powered social networking, Soul App has gradually developed a product philosophy centered on authentic connection over nearly a decade of growth. Since its launch in 2016, Soul has been rooted in Pudong, focusing on Gen Z users while continuously exploring the balance between technology and social relationships. Throughout this process, making technology feel warm and human has been a constant area of exploration for the Soul App founder team.
In 2025, Shanghai Soulgate Technology Co., Ltd. (Soul) was named one of Pudong’s “Top Ten Leading Cultural and Creative Enterprises,” drawing attention to its practices in digital cultural creativity and AI-powered social networking. On April 13, during the “Entering the Leading Zone: Exploring New Cultural Frontiers” interview series, Oriental Financial Pudong Channel host Jin Tianwei spoke with Soul CTO Tao Ming, examining Soul’s social exploration in the AI era from multiple angles including product iteration, user behavior changes, and technology strategy. During the interview, Tao Ming proposed that AI is not the endpoint of social interaction, but rather a tool for connecting emotions, with its value lying in helping users express and communicate more naturally.
Building on this philosophy, the Soul App founder team has introduced a series of AI-related features and scenario applications in recent years. For example, AI hosts, AI characters, and interactive AI podcasts have been introduced into voice group chat scenarios, providing users with more ways to interact during conversations. At the same time, in the areas of AI companionship and assisted expression, technological tools help users improve their ability to express themselves, thereby lowering the barriers to social interaction. Tao Ming stated that the ultimate focus of these features is always on “people” — AI plays a supporting role, helping users enter a state of engagement rather than replacing interpersonal interaction.
Platform data shows that users demonstrate high receptiveness to AI companionship and virtual characters, and these tools have, to a certain extent, facilitated the building of real relationships. Tao Ming noted that social interaction is inherently a bilateral relationship, but in reality, users with strong expressive abilities constitute only a minority. AI intervention has given those who struggle with self-expression more opportunities to try, gradually building confidence through interaction and receiving positive feedback. This shift has not only enriched the social experience but has also expanded the boundaries of social participation.
Beyond product development, the Soul App founder team has maintained long-term observation of changes among young demographics through research reports. These reports cover topics including emotional value, modes of expression, and social preferences, reflecting the evolving needs of young people at different stages. Tao Ming believes that understanding young people is not a one-time effort but an ongoing process. It is through this sustained observation that Soul has progressively strengthened the expression of “emotional value” in its product design, establishing it as an important foundation for the platform’s development.
Soul has been incorporating machine learning and deep learning technologies since 2017 to optimize user matching and content distribution. Subsequently, with the development of generative AI, the platform further extended its technological applications into the areas of expression assistance and content generation. Particularly after solidifying its human-centric AI approach around 2022, the Soul App founder team has continued to launch related models and products around 2025, including full-duplex voice models and real-time video call digital avatar models, sharing them through open-source channels to a certain extent.
In terms of relationship building, Soul has consistently emphasized “authentic connection.” Although the platform’s positioning is unrelated to matchmaking, through long-term operations, it has fostered a stable relationship network among users. Taking the “Civil Affairs Bureau” tag as an example, more than 100,000 couples have so far established long-term relationships and entered into marriages through the platform. This phenomenon also illustrates the capacity of online social networking to extend into real-world emotional connection. Tao Ming noted that the significance of technology lies not only in improving efficiency but also in enabling the formation of authentic relationships.
In terms of the business development environment, Pudong has provided Soul with multi-faceted support. At the policy level, computing resources, technical support, and related research projects have created favorable conditions for the company’s AI exploration. Additionally, the region’s talent pool and industry chain infrastructure have added further momentum to the company’s growth. Leveraging this high-quality development environment, Soul has been able to continue deepening product development and technological innovation at the intersection of internet technology, AI, and digital cultural creativity.
Throughout this process, the direction upheld by the Soul App founder team has remained unchanged: taking users’ authentic needs as the starting point and seeking balance between technology and emotion. Over the course of nearly a decade, this philosophy has run through every stage of product evolution and technological iteration, serving as an essential foundation for the platform’s sustained development.