Home Nvidia-sponsored Synthesia reveals AI-generated “expressive avatars”

Nvidia-sponsored Synthesia reveals AI-generated “expressive avatars”

TL:DR

  • Synthesia introduces "Expressive Avatars" portraying human emotion from text instructions.
  • It offers professional-quality videos without cameras, with half of Fortune 100 companies as clients.
  • Synthesia implements AI safety measures to combat disinformation and 'deepfakes'.

Synthesia has revealed a new range of artificial intelligence (AI) generated digital avatars which can portray human emotion based on text instruction. 

The London-based company has presented its “Expressive Avatars” to synergize real emotion in the virtual world with users able to create professional quality videos without cameras and microphones.

Nvidia-sponsored Synthesia is said to have half of the Fortune 100 companies on its client list with its services utilized by more than 55,000 businesses, overall. The firm specializes in creating digital avatars for corporate presentations and training purposes.

Actors read scripts before a green screen to train the AI system with one demonstration showing basic information being fed into the program.

The three lines of text were, “I am happy. I am sad. I am frustrated.” The AI-generated persona in the video then responded by reading the relevant text with the matching tone and emotion.

Since its formation in 2017, Synthesia has prospered to the extent it reached a valuation of around $1 billion last year, after a $90 million funding round. The soaring success has put the company on a “unicorn” platform, amongst other UK entities such as Accel, FirstMark Capital, GV, Kleiner Perkins, and MMC.

Synthesia enacts AI safety measures

Synthesia has moved to allay concerns over disinformation and ‘deepfakes’ by introducing a moderation system for all of the content it generates. Publishers must sign up as enterprise customers to be able to create synthetic avatars.

It has also taken action in the lead-up to crucial national elections this year with further measures to stave off the threat from bad actors seeking to interfere in the democratic process, including membership of the Coalition for Content Provenance and Authenticity.

The creator collective is an umbrella group of AI companies working in collaboration to include watermarks and agreed content details within AI-generated work to responsibly let viewers know what they are looking at is made by AI.

Image credit: Ideogram

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Graeme Hanna
Tech Journalist

Graeme Hanna is a full-time, freelance writer with significant experience in online news as well as content writing. Since January 2021, he has contributed as a football and news writer for several mainstream UK titles including The Glasgow Times, Rangers Review, Manchester Evening News, MyLondon, Give Me Sport, and the Belfast News Letter. Graeme has worked across several briefs including news and feature writing in addition to other significant work experience in professional services. Now a contributing news writer at ReadWrite.com, he is involved with pitching relevant content for publication as well as writing engaging tech news stories.

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