Synthesia Sees 150,000 Users Create Avatars For Enterprise Use

Synthesia, an AI video startup based in London, has seen a surge in users creating avatars for enterprise use, with over 150,000 users generating avatars for training or marketing videos in multiple languages. The avatars, while not perfect, are convincing enough to be used by large enterprises. The creator of an avatar might have minor criticisms, but these are more about self-perception than accuracy. The avatar is a digital reflection of a real human, and while it may not fool everyone, it is close to being indistinguishable from a real person.

Victor Riparbelli, CEO and co-founder of Synthesia, attributes the human-like quality of avatars to microexpressions. These are the small, subtle movements and intonations that make a person seem real. Riparbelli explains that for an avatar to seem human, it needs to vary its speech patterns, just like a real person would. This includes speeding up, slowing down, and emphasizing certain words. Additionally, the avatar should use hand gestures in a way that is natural for the person it is mimicking. All these small details need to fit together for the avatar to look and sound real.

Riparbelli believes that the uncanny valley, a term that describes the sensation of looking at an entity that looks almost—but not quite—like a human, is about to be broken through. He predicts that this will happen before the end of the year, just as it has been broken through with images, text, voice, and video. Synthesia has attracted significant funding from venture capitalists and has a customer base that includes many of the world’s largest companies.