My latest experiments with AI to rewire learning have taken me back to playing with AI Avatars.
The market has many AI avatar tools with varying degrees of quality (I have seen some horror shows). I’ve played around with a few but never really found a good use case for them.
The quality level has mostly put me off sharing anything built with them, but times change, and the tech has advanced…a lot.
In L&D, I’ve often seen Avatars used as a way to elevate bad practices.
Too many turn that already crap course/powerpoint/pdf into a droning avatar and think that’s ‘job done’. In reality, its just crap in → crap out, and that’s not the fault of the tech – its ours.
We’re falling to the limits of our ideas.
Faster and more might feel like the only option on the table with AI avatars, but that’s not the case.
We have to rewire how we do what we do.
Converting an ‘average’ static piece of content into something AI-enhanced is probably not your best call.
Grand Theft Avatars
I must admit, watching several deepfake-themed thrillers like the superb British drama The Capture has put me in a constant state of suspicion when it comes to using my likeness with any of these tools.
Sadly, this choice has been taken away from me in the last few months, as I’ve dealt with continued instances of my video content being stolen, translated into different languages, and reused across social platforms.
Yes, they even target little old me.
Apparently, I’m a small hit with Japanese audiences.
Those reservations aside, I always believe every tool has a time and place.
Stand-alone vs built-in
While I like stand-alone AI tools, having everything in one place for video editing is an advantage.
So, when I saw Descript, a video editing tool I use daily, introduce their v1 of AI avatars to their platform, I decided to jump back in and see where the tech is at today.
Let me clarify something here: I’m aware that better AI avatar tools exist, but I’m not looking to use several different apps chained together.
If I get a lot of value out of an existing product and they bring AI features that work well within that product, I’m all for that.
The ability to do everything I need with existing features I’m comfortable with, and have that additional AI layer in-app, is what gets more of my attention these days.
Plus, I don’t have all the money in the world for a bazillion app subscriptions.
As the feature is a v1, I’m not expecting the level of something like HeyGen or Synthesia.
I’d give my experience and the result a 7/10 — and there’s nothing wrong with a 7/10 in my book.
Here’s what I liked:
- The lip-sync looks pretty damn good
- Body and face movements didn’t feel distracting
- The ease of writing my script and the transcription quality
- How effortlessly the avatar worked with existing features — I did expect breaks, but had none
What could be better:
- Avatar selection: currently, you can only pick from animated, otherworldly or digital-type characters. It’s a v1, so this is fine, and I didn’t want to provide my own avatar
- Avatar visual quality: You can probably see this in the video. Although the video is output in 4K, the avatar looks pixelated at times
- Over-exaggeration of words: I see this in a lot of these avatars, and you’ll see it in the video too. The pitch when pronouncing some words can be off.
In sum: I’m not assessing this as an AI avatar feature on its own. That 7/10 rating takes into account how it complements the existing product and the ease of use for me as a daily user.
→ What do you think? Check out the finished video and hit ‘reply’ to let me know.
Oh, I nearly forgot — I need to tell you about the use case.
The problem I’m solving
I binge (with AI) a lot of reports.
A lot of the time, I don’t want to keep writing another article or shoot another talking head video about new research, even if I’ve found it valuable.
A new report from Microsoft, covering how they think teams will evolve with AI, fell into this category.
It’s a great report, and I will write in more detail about it, but I wanted to get some initial thoughts out there, which I think you (yes, gentle reader — you) could benefit from, until I drink copious amounts of tea to distil those thoughts.
So that scenario, and Descript launching this feature, collided, and here we are.
I spent 15 minutes skim-reading the report (yes, I still do that), jotting down the key insights and ideas that stood out for me in my little notebook (and yes, I still do that too), before I spoke to my good AI friend in NotebookLM.
That chat involved NLM reviewing the report with my notes and crafting a narrative together on what I felt was most useful to share. This became the script for the video, which I tweaked a lot in the editing phase. I felt it needed more of my infused sarcastic British tone.
All the transitions and media in the video were done within Descript’s editor.
3 hours later, you have the below.
I feel like it turned out ok.
So, will I be using these all the time? No.
But will I be more open to experimentation with Avatars depending on the context of my goals? 100%.
Bonus: How I created this video in Descript (step by step tutorial)
I imagine you might want to know how the above was created.
Fret not, I filmed a second video to show you how I used Descript to build the end-to-end production, including the avatar creation and editing.
Don’t say I never treat you!
AI avatar tools to test
I always stick to the best tool being one that best fits your goals and priorities.
For me, Descript ticks this box right now as I already pay for the core product, but that doesn’t mean it’ll be right for you.
Other avatar focused platforms include:
- HeyGen
- Synthesia
- Elai
- Coloyssan
If you’re already a power user of these, let me know how you use them.
Final thoughts
There are 3 points to take away today:
- Think about how you’re rewiring how we craft learning experiences with AI – don’t do what you’ve always done (death to PDFs and PowerPoint)
- Getting quality features in a product you love using already can be more powerful than using several different tools combined. This is contextual, though
- The best way to ‘figure out’ how useful AI could be, is to use AI
→ If you’ve found this helpful, please consider sharing it wherever you hang out online, tag me in and share your thoughts.
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