Building an avatar of myself is even stranger than I expected.
It is a choreographed experience that made me as socially uncomfortable as I have ever felt alone. In this case, I gave the Avatar platform, synthesia, an AI video based in London – on the camera on my laptop. In the course of about two minutes I read lines loudly while I scroll down the screen:
Before I continue, I combine with a joyful feeling again.
When I make the following positive statements, there is energy in my voice. My sound is committed and bright.
She laughs every time the breeze tickles her nose.
Then I followed with a series of positive, corporate -friendly statements in the vein: Imagine what effects we can have on this revolutionary idea!
The mood was not bad, but it is strange – the process felt vulnerable to me as if I were giving the computer a bit of myself. It is also quick and the entire process took about 10 minutes, including clicking at the beginning, tapping over a coffee cup and reading the script twice to improve some of my awkwardness from the first round. I submitted the video and synthesia told me that I had an avatar one day. I think a short pregnancy time for a digital version of me, because the version that I have been taking for 32 years now.
Last year, 150,000 synthesia users made A-generated avatars of themselves. (Customers often choose from the company’s 250 stocks.) And while I have built my Avatar on behalf of journalism, the most common applications for synthesia are very important: Business training and internal communication videos. The avatars of synthesia have made impressive progress in the entire business world: the company currently has more than 65,000 customers and serves over 70% of the Fortune 100. The company, which now has 500 employees, has collected more than 330 million US dollars of risk capital, including large percins, GV, accel and NEA.
It is a very non-Hollywood form of the video success. Enterprise customers access the platform of synthesia Microsoft For PowerPoint. The attraction is a combination of costs and scale: If you have a large multinational company, it is an expensive, time -consuming undertaking in several languages that would historically be limited to teams with considerable budgets. In addition, most people take information more easily as text through video, and this applies to the burgeoning rows of gene Z workers who have grew up on TikTok and grew up Instagram Roll. To effectively communicate with these workers, managers have to do this with video.
With the kind approval of synthesia
“I think that applies to almost all transformative technologies – that the real strength of it enabled a new group of people to do something that they have never been able to do before,” says Victor Riparbelli, CEO and co -founder of synthesia. “We have learned that there are billions of people in the world who do not make videos today who really want to make videos.”
Making digital “people” feel more real
The technology of synthesia is clearly a by -product of the generative AI wave, which is driven by an underlying large AI model, which is trained to understand what we say and how we say it. This creates avatars who imitate the language with convincing realism – not through a recorded video, but through AI that can predict movements and facial expressions. The result is a digital person who is reasonably naturalistic. This naturalism, in turn, helps the viewers and listeners to feel more comfortable – although the videos sometimes sit directly on the edge of the scary valley.
Half a decade before Chatgpt created the AI boom, Synthesia was launched in 2017. Riparbelli – Original from a small Danish city, in which he built websites for local shops as a child – showed his co -founders Steffen Tjerild, Matthias Niessner and Lourdes Agapito through a network of academics and start connections.
In the early years, the founders did not even concentrate on generating video and drove the energy to use AI to name existing videos and definitely stay above water. They fought to collect money at a particularly crucial moment, Mark Cubans E -Mail found and sent him a cold pitch. Kubaner replied within six minutes and resolved a 12-hour email exchange, which was in Great Britain until 4 a.m. after an investment of $ 1 million. (Cuban refused to comment on this story.)
“The first three or four years were no success,” said Riparbelli. “It was impossible to maintain funds. The technologies did not work. We didn’t know exactly what it was useful for. This basically took us until the end of 2020 when we hit our turning solomomit.”
With the kind approval of synthesia
The transition from synthesia to the company video occurred slowly and then suddenly a by -product to speak to thousands of potential customers who wanted something better than a PDF or PowerPoint.
“We found that many people in corporate jobs who do training, marketing, customer support – all people told us:” I know that I have an important message. And I know that nobody reads my documents, “said Riparbelli.” You would say: ‘I want to create videos, but making videos is just so incomparable.’ ”
Today, the Fortune 500 and Fortune Global 500 customers of synthesia use the technology in a way that is personalized both deeply and for their business, but with each other. Pharmaceutical company Merchant KGAA from Darmstadt, Germany, uses synthesia to replace time-consuming live recordings on product tactualizations and for multilingual training. The company “sees great potential for avatars to provide information more digestive and accessible,” says Florian Metz, Global Head of Analytics and AI product portfolio at Merck KGAA, says Assets by email.
All over the world in California, Service Use the technology for its global learning programs. Pasquale Fontanetta, VP from Learning Solutions Studio, for the company’s sales academy for the sale of the company says that synthesia for 20 videos “shorten the production time by 50%” and “localization with estimated cost savings enables up to $ 5,500”. (ServiceNow is the sponsor of this Digital Magazine Edition.)
Another software company, the 360 billion US dollar German giant JUICEUses synthesia videos in its sales and marketing processes. “We see synthesia not only as a training tool, but also as a communication platform,” wrote Andrew Steane, VP of the company management office for SAP North America.
For Mondelēz International-the owner of a flood of snack food brands such as Oreo, Cadbury, Ritz and Sour Patch Kids-Hat Synthesia, a solution for a problem in the size of a mountain of PDFS.
“When I said that I will send you a Help cardboard PDF that is long with some screenshots, you will read that, right?” said Geoffrey Wright, Global Solution owner for generative AI and digital experience. If you couldn’t say it, it is sarcastic. “I interviewed people internally and asked: What is the likelihood that you will read an article I will send you if it was not professionally critical?
This year alone, Mondelēz made 30,000 videos with synthesia, said Wright.
The pitfalls of digital avatars
Synthesia has had their share of problems and controversy that are emblematic for those who are faced with all generative video companies. In 2023, for example, a customer in Venezuela was used to produce state propaganda videos in which avatars were produced to imitate western news channels. The episode crystallized concerns about political disinformation. Synthesia banned customers and significantly strengthened the guidelines and moderation systems in relation to news and political content as a result and has continued to do so in the years.
The company is part of the broader discourse on AI and potential loss of job: Does more synthesia videos less work for actual professional video producers? And as with all generative media companies, synthesia has taken concerns from the actors about how their similarities can be used when they work with the platform. This year, synthesia undertook steps this year to compensate the actors who go beyond only cash with it, and announced a equity fund of 1 million US dollars who lends corporate shares to the actors who deal for the creation of AI -AVATE. These actors will have a direct financial interest in synthesia when the company grows and the company says that the program, like everything else, contributes to building a long -term dialogue with the actors.
With the kind approval of synthesia
Synthesia works on a framework that Riparbelli calls “three CS” – and the cooperation and cooperation, and adds that the company does not make avatars of someone without their explicit consent. “There are other players in this area who make a funny video of a celebrity, not for misinformation, but to get a viral moment,” he said. “This is, for example, something we have never decided. We do not revive dead people. We draw the line: If the person cannot give their explicit consent, we don’t.
The company also takes on serious control over the types of content that may be manufactured on the website and actively works with governments and supervisory authorities. Every prospective customer who is not an identifiable company turns away.
“We say no to a business,” said Riparbelli. “If you work with large companies, you don’t want to work with small guerrilla companies where you will sell a large company contract one day, the next day you will be your CEO for a viral moment.”
Mondelēz ‘Wright evaluates the entire generative video products market every six months and points out that synthesia has a serious competition by the competitors Heygen, Colossyan and hour one supported by Venture (recently taken over by Wix). Despite this semi-constant process of re-evaluation, Mondelēz has been using synthesia for three years. Why?
“They are the best for the company,” says Wright, because synthesia is the security and data protocols that need the largest companiesPresent he added.
About 24 hours after my recording session, I reopened the Synthesien website to see my avatar. Virtual ME is not as frightening as I expected – it is strange that it is in the same way as I see it in a video call. This digital version of mine has some microexpressions and a smoothed voice that is undeniably derived from mine.
“Hello, I am your synthesia -avatar,” my new creation told me. “Did you know that I was talking about many other languages?”
