Nvidia-backed AI startup Synthesia now lets you make multilingual video presentations using just your phone or webcam.

Synthesia, a British artificial intelligence startup, introduced a series of new product updates on Monday, including the ability to create your own Apple-style keynote presentations with AI avatars simply using a laptop webcam or your phone.

The seven-year-old company, backed by Nvidiasaid the new updates to the product will make it a more comprehensive video production suite for large businesses., rather than just a platform offering users the ability to create AI-generated avatars.

New updates released by Synthesia include the ability to produce AI avatars using webcams or a phone, “full body” avatars with hands and arms, and a screen recording tool which shows an AI avatar guiding you through what you’re watching.

Synthesia, which claims to be used by nearly half of the Fortfune 500, uses AI avatars for all sorts of purposes.

These can range from creating bespoke training videos to guide employees through certain processes, or generating promotional material that can be delivered as a video rather than an email or email. other text communications.

But this has not always been the case. According to co-founder and CEO Victor Riparbelli, during the first three years of the company’s history, Synthesia actually started out trying to sell its technology to Hollywood agencies and big-budget video production companies. The company used computer vision for an AI dubbing tool that made mouth movements more realistic in different languages.

“What we realized was that the quality threshold for doing anything with these guys was so high that no matter what we do, we’re just going to be a very small part of a process much larger,” Riparbelli told CNBC in an interview at the company’s headquarters. London office.

“What was more interesting was the democratization aspect: there are millions of people in the world who want to make video, but they don’t make video today because they don’t have the budget.”

In an Apple-style speech, Synthesia’s CEO revealed the company’s new products, presenting them as a more productivity-focused suite of tools for businesses, rather than just a platform offering AI avatars .

One of the biggest new features the company showed off was the ability to create AI-generated avatars by recording less than five minutes of footage using a webcam or your phone. You can also clone your voice so that avatars speak in several different languages

Typically, to create an AI avatar using the Synthesia platform, you need to visit a studio in person. Human actors enter a recording booth, record their voices and perform lines in front of a green screen on a real movie set.

This is all training data intended to provide Synthesia’s AI algorithm with the facial and vocal nuances it needs to create avatars that look human and speak expressively. Earlier this year, Synthesia launched new expressive avatars capable of conveying human emotions, including happiness, sadness and frustration.

But now Synthesia is introducing new software that will make it easier for users to produce a digital version of themselves from anywhere, simply using a webcam and Synthesia’s software.

The company is also launching the ability to create full avatars. This is different from Synthesia’s current avatars, which are limited to a simple portrait view. Now you can walk into a studio with dozens of cameras, sensors, and lights all around you to create avatars that can move their hands.

Generating hands is something that has traditionally been difficult for AI to do – often because hands are only a small part of the human body and are not typically the focus of visual content.

Synthesia also launched the ability to play videos of AI avatars speaking in their language of choice, whether that’s English, French, German or Chinese.

In the future, Synthesia says it will be able to adapt AI avatars to different countries: for example, a Nigerian avatar taking a user through a tutorial rather than an American one.

Synthesia also launched a new AI video assistant capable of producing summaries of articles and entire documents. For example, this could be a human resources specialist who makes a short video explaining the company’s benefits.

Another big feature the company is rolling out is a new screen recording tool, which shows an AI avatar guiding you through what you’re watching.

In the CNBC interview with him, Riparbelli called what Synthesia is trying to do an enterprise-focused product overhaul, which would bring it closer to giants like Microsoft, Selling powerAnd Zoom in the business category.

“The world has been blown away by all of this over the last 12, 18, 24 months, which is great,” Riparbelli told CNBC.

“But now we’ve experimented a lot and discovered the right use cases for these technologies that have lasting business value. This isn’t just a short-term PR moment.”

“You need to achieve that business goal of reducing customer support tickets by serving videos instead of text; or selling by creating videos instead of just sending emails,” he added.

“Now people are building workflows around this. They need better ways to achieve their business goals, not just interfacing with AI models. That’s where we’re heading in as a business.”

Last year, Synthesia raised $90 million from investors including US chipmaker Nvidia and venture capital firm Accel, in a funding round that valued it at $1 billion and gave it the status of “unicorn”.

The company’s competitors include AI video tools Veed, Colossyan, Elai and HeyGen. And Chinese social media app TikTok also recently launched Symphony Assistant, a product that lets creators create their own AI avatars.

The company makes money through a number of subscription pricing plans ranging from $22 for a “starter” plan and $67 for a “creator” plan, to custom “enterprise” plans where pricing is based on negotiations with the Synthesia sales team.