Personal avatars are a new beginning for digital identity

2017 was a tough year for a non-technical founder to start an AI company. We were entering a mini-AI winter where the main path to success for a startup was to have a CEO with an academic background and an idea that addressed a niche problem. Many of these startups ended up as Big Tech acqui-hires and their technology rarely shipped in a product.?

Steffen Tjerrild and I were not university professors and did not want to start a company just to be acquired. So we kept knocking on the doors of dozens of VCs with a simple proposition: by the end of the next decade, people will be making Hollywood-quality videos from their laptops with computer-generated actors that are indistinguishable from the humans in the physical world. Therefore, someone could build a product and a business based on this idea and transform it into a $100 billion company.?

Everyone laughed at us off and I don’t blame them. The technology back then barely worked and the use cases were limited. But we kept going until we met Mark Cuban who understood the long-term implications of what we were building and gave us our first million dollars.?

Last month, we got one step closer to our decade-long vision: Synthesia introduced Personal Avatars, which are AI avatars that can be made in a natural setting, using a few minutes of footage from a laptop or phone. To learn more about their features and applications, you can watch my presentation here.?

But before you dive in, stick around because I want to tell you why this isn't just a product launch, but it could represent the beginning of a new way of thinking about identity.

Think about it: we're already curating our online personas through carefully selected photos and videos on Instagram or TikTok. Personal avatars will take this to the next level, offering us unprecedented control over our digital presence. In fact, I predict that by 2030, creating an AI clone of yourself will be as normal as opening an Instagram account. We’ll be able to easily clone ourselves many times over, and then use those digital identities to communicate with family, friends, colleagues or the world.?

You could attend a virtual meeting as your best self, even if you've just rolled out of bed. Or have your avatar delivering a pitch-perfect presentation in multiple languages simultaneously. Or get your digital twin to handle routine tasks while you focus on what truly matters. This may sound like sci-fi today, but it's actually the next logical step in our digital evolution.

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The benefits are clear: increased productivity, enhanced communication across multiple languages, and the ability to be in many places at once.?

From entertainment to education, no sector will be untouched. Early adopters stand to gain a significant advantage in this new landscape. Companies that integrate avatar technology into their operations will see dramatic increases in efficiency and global reach.

But like any transformative technology, it comes with challenges. Critics argue that widespread use of AI avatars could erode trust and authenticity. They're not wrong to be concerned, if we don’t set solid rules today for how these avatars are created and used. As personal cloning becomes ubiquitous, we'll need identity and content verification systems to help us determine where a video or image was made and by whom. And companies developing this technology need to take more steps to ensure that it’s not misused.?

At Synthesia, we believe that embracing this technology, rather than fearing it, is how we’ll harness its potential while mitigating risks. Unlike our competitors, we’ve built our platform with responsible AI innovation principles baked in from day one. When it comes to personal avatars, we never clone someone without their consent and have advanced moderation systems and policies in place to ensure that bad faith actors don’t flood the internet with AI slop and non-consensual deepfakes.?

So the question isn't whether you'll have a personal avatar, but when. If you’re ready to meet your digital self, head over to https://www.synthesia.io/features/custom-avatar/personal and start creating your own personal avatar.

Other Synthesia news and updates

As part of the UK government’s plan to accelerate economic growth, transform public services, and boost living standards, Matt Clifford has been appointed by the Secretary of State for DSIT to develop the AI Opportunities Action Plan. The Action Plan will set out how the government can support the growth of the AI sector and compete on the global stage. I was invited to attend a meeting in 10 Downing St and share my views on the UK’s strengths and weaknesses in AI, the barriers that AI companies such as Synthesia face and ideas for how to scale? the UK’s AI sector moving forward.

Forbes and the Wall Street Journal wrote about how businesses use Synthesia to solve real-world business challenges. For example, Birchwood Foods from Wisconsin uses our platform to create training videos for staff it hires from the local community. Some of their employees are refugees from Africa or Asia who don’t speak English and can’t read or write. By using video as a medium of communication, Birchwood Foods ensure that their staff still get a top-quality workplace training experience.?

We also published a new case study highlighting how Spirit Airlines decreased phone support inquiries from their staff by 76% by using AI video. Their employee experience team used our AI Video Assistant tool to convert pages of benefits documentation into videos that were six times more engaging. This increase in engagement also? improved information retention, as employees paid more attention to the information that was shared with them.?

I spoke with Jane Wakefield for 30 minutes on the UKTN podcast and we covered a lot of territory, including AI regulation, the value of content generated with AI, and how Synthesia was able to survive three years of experimentation while we were looking for a business model.?

I also attended SaaStr Europe where Philippe Botteri from Accel asked me lots of questions about how founders can build a B2B generative AI company. You can watch the entire exchange here.??

Synthesia has signed up as a supporter of the second version of the Responsible AI Framework developed by RIL, an industry body founded by technology leaders who have seen first hand how startups innovating responsibly expedite growth and build foundations for the long term.

Continuing on the theme of responsible innovation, we gave Risky Business Solutions , a security group founded by Sandeep A. and Anthony Eastin , access to Synthesia so they could perform a red team test of our content moderation systems. Alexandru Voica, our head of corporate affairs and policy, published a summary of their findings on our blog. I’m really happy that the investments we’ve made over the last year in trust and safety are paying off and I hope other companies active in the generative AI space will learn from our work and, hopefully, use these insights to build products that are safer for consumers and businesses.?

My read/watchlist

Now that you know how Synthesia got started and why I believe Personal Avatars are the future of content creation, here is what caught my eye in July and August:?

• AP: China is the runaway leader in generative AI patent applications followed by the US, the UN says
• The Information: The Creator Economy’s AI Tailwind
• Bloomberg: OpenAI Develops System to Track Progress Toward Human-Level AI
• WSJ: It’s Time for AI to Start Making Money for Businesses. Can It?
• Reuters: AI startup funding more than doubles in Q2, Crunchbase data shows
• The Daily Upside: Europe is Hot on AI Regulation, Less So on Startup Policy
• Fortune: Industry leaders say companies are adopting AI, but cost and reliability remain key challenges
• WSJ: Universities Don’t Want AI Research to Leave Them Behind
• Wired: Apple, Nvidia, Anthropic Used Thousands of Swiped YouTube Videos to Train AI
• FT: Europe’s rushed attempt to set the rules for AI
• Reuters: Britain's new government aims to regulate most powerful AI models

Drop me a comment or question about generative AI or Synthesia below, and I’ll spotlight the best one in next month’s update!