Animated avatars generated by Synthesia, an artificial intelligence video platform.
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Nvidia– Supported artificial intelligence company Synthesia on Thursday unveiled a new wave of AI-generated digital avatars that can use users’ text input to convey human emotions.
The company says its “expressive avatars” can blur the lines between virtual worlds and real-life characters. It’s designed to eliminate cameras, microphones, actors, lengthy edits and other costs from the professional filmmaking process. Synthesia has a studio in London where actors read scripts in front of a green screen to train the system.
In a demo, the company showed three lines of text inserted into its platform — “I’m happy. I’m sad. I’m depressed” — followed by an AI-generated actor in the video in each corresponding emotion.
According to Synthesia, the company’s technology is used by more than 55,000 companies, including half of the Fortune 100, to create avatars for corporate presentations and training videos.
Founded in 2017, Synthesia raised $90 million from investors last year, valuing it at about $1 billion, making it one of the UK’s newer artificial intelligence “unicorn” companies. Accel, Kleiner Perkins, GV, FirstMark Capital and MMC are also shareholders.
The company addressed concerns that its videos could be used to create fake news content, saying publishers must sign up as corporate customers to create synthetic avatars. Content produced using its technology is reviewed by moderators.
Synthesia does not publicly disclose pricing for its enterprise customers.
The company also requires all new customers to go through a thorough “know your customer” process similar to that used in the banking industry, which helps prevent bad actors from creating fake company profiles to spread misinformation.
Synthesia said it is already preparing for the upcoming global elections and has implemented a series of controls to ensure that its platform cannot be abused by hostile actors seeking to manipulate various voting results.
The company is also a member of the Content Provenance and Authenticity Alliance, a group of artificial intelligence companies that aims to implement content credentials and digital “watermarks” on AI-generated content to ensure viewers know what they are seeing. The content is produced by humans.
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