When Alexandru Voica, head of corporate affairs at the video-generation startup Synthesia, sent me a link this summer to the newest addition to their PR team, I was surprised. It was an interactive virtual avatar of him, trained to answer common press questions about Synthesia — what it does, how it works. The day before, I had been on a panel where PR people asked me whether I minded pitches that used AI-generated text. But Alexandru's avatar was beyond that. To me, it seemed like the final boss of using AI in PR.
In September, Synthesia invited me to its new office space in New York. Originally based in the U.K., Synthesia is a hot digital avatar startup alongside others like D-ID, HeyGen, and Colossyan. It hit a $4 billion valuation earlier this year and said last year it had crossed $100 million in ARR.
Synthesia lets enterprises build interactive training videos with AI avatars and recently launched a product called Roleplay Sessions that lets employees practice — for example, sales pitches — with an interactive AI avatar that responds and scores their answers.
When I went to the new office opening and they asked if I would like my own AI avatar, I didn't hesitate to say yes. Of course I wanted my own digital twin. My outfit was cute that day, and my hair was in place.
Until I met my digital twin, I had been indifferent toward avatars, but I felt they would inevitably become part of everyday online life. I'd heard of people on Instagram creating them in their likenesses to help make social content. I find it all very interesting, and it's perhaps why I have no qualms presenting to you my digital twin. This is the first time Synthesia has made a digital avatar for a journalist (or for anyone outside of Voica, period). It is trained on my story about why venture-backed startups commit more fraud than non-VC-backed startups and will only answer questions about that story.
Below, simply press "start in a new window" to begin. You can ask it questions like:
- Why did I decide to write this story?
- What is the research paper about?
- What did the researchers find?
To make this, I entered a mini film studio nestled inside Synthesia's office, where they took numerous photos of me and captured a two-minute recording of my voice. I had to consent to these avatars being made and, well, digital Dom was born. They created a personal avatar for me (one that just reads whatever script I give it) — with and without glasses — and they made two interactive avatars for me (ones that can talk back and listen to me), also with and without glasses.
We picked an article to train the interactive avatar on — my story about why venture-backed startups commit more fraud than non-VC-backed startups. The avatar was then trained to answer questions only about that article. The process took a few weeks, and the result is what you see above: a digital version of me that can answer your questions about my reporting.
via TechCrunch AI