Black, William J. O'Farrell, Eric Rachlin, and Alex Weiss who were connected at Brown University and Max Planck Institute for Intelligent Systems.

While Black was teaching a course on computer vision at Brown University, the Virginia State Police contacted him about a robbery and murder at a 7-Eleven.

By creating a statistical model, Black's group could vindicate some of the evidence in the case like confirming the suspect's height.

[13][14] On June 1, 2017, Body Labs launched SOMA, software that uses artificial intelligence to predict 3D human shape and motion from RGB photos or video.

[15][16] On July 21, 2017, Body Labs launched SOMA Shape API for 3D model and Measurement Prediction.