An animated avatar created by AI video platform Synthesia.
Synthesis
Nvidia-backed artificial intelligence firm Synthesia on Thursday unveiled a new wave of AI-generated digital avatars that can convey human emotions using user text input.
The company said its “expressive avatars” can blur the lines between the virtual world and real characters. It aims to eliminate cameras, microphones, actors, long edits and other costs from the professional video production process. Synthesia has a studio in London, where actors read scripts in front of a green screen to train the system.
In a demonstration, the company showed three lines of text being inserted into its platform — “I'm happy, I'm sad, I'm disappointed” — after which an AI-generated actor in the video responded by reading the text. Emotions related to each.
According to Synthesia, the company's technology is used by more than 55,000 businesses, including half of the Fortune 100, to create digital avatars for corporate presentations and training videos.
Founded in 2017, Synthesia raised $90 million from investors last year at a valuation of nearly $1 billion, making it one of the UK's recent AI “unicorn” firms. Accel, Kleiner Perkins, GV, FirstMark Capital and MMC are also shareholders.
The company addressed concerns about how its videos could be used to create fake news content, saying publishers must sign up as enterprise users to create fake avatars. Content created with its technology is moderated by moderators.
Synthesia does not publicly disclose pricing for its enterprise customers.
The company also requires all new clients to go through a thorough “know your customer” process similar to the banking industry, which helps prevent bad actors from creating false company profiles to spread misinformation. .
Synthesia said it is already preparing for the upcoming global elections to ensure its platform is not misused by adversary actors seeking to manipulate the results of various votes. A number of controls have been implemented for this.
The company is also part of the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity – an organization of AI companies that aims to implement content authentication and digital “watermarking” of AI-generated content so viewers know what they're watching. They are artificially created. Intelligence and not by man.