Want to clone yourself? Make a personal AI avatar – here's how

Don’t have time to record a message, but think it would be better coming from your face? Generative AI video startup Synthesia has a solution.

Following last month’s release of Synthesia 2.0, an end-to-end video creation platform for enterprises, the startup announced on Wednesday that it is making Personal Avatars, its lifelike AI digital twin feature, available for all users. 

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“Whether you’re a content creator, educator, business professional, or simply someone who loves to connect with others online, Personal Avatars offer a new and dynamic way to enhance how you communicate and collaborate,” the company’s blog post states.

Synthesia users can generate their Personal Avatar using two minutes of video footage taken on a phone or webcam. To create more engaging, realistic content, the company’s AI feature focuses on accurate lip-syncing and provides natural-looking backgrounds.

To make an avatar, you first have to upload a two-minute source clip, followed by a second video giving Synthesia your consent to create an AI using your likeness. The company encrypts data to protect Personal Avatars from being misused, saying it only creates avatars with explicit consent and deletes avatar owners’ data upon request. 

According to Synthesia, the AI avatars are powered by a looping technology known as auto alignment, which identifies when an avatar is speaking and can coordinate its body language based on the script. Avatars speak using a clone of your voice, and can communicate in over 30 languages — regardless of which ones you actually speak. The company repurposed the tech behind its Expressive Avatars to make the voices more lifelike.

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Whether you need to personalize a message for your colleagues, create a department-wide training guide, or make promotional videos for social media, Synthesia hopes its Personal Avatars will add a human touch to otherwise run-of-the-mill material, especially in enterprise contexts. According to the release, the company aims to “push the boundaries of digital communication.”

Personal Avatars are available for subscribers to Synthesia’s Starter, Creator, and Enterprise plans — just log in to your account in the browser and create a digital twin in a few clicks. You can learn more about Personal Avatars here.