Synthesia Avatars Target 'Ordinary Employees,' Not Celebrity Impressions

What happened

Synthesia's video features a professional impersonator team that has spent more than 20 years performing as David Brent from the British sitcom "The Office." The impersonators, who have entertained audiences at conferences, bachelor parties, and even weddings, initially reacted with unease upon hearing about Synthesia's AI avatars—worried that AI might replace their profession.

But as the video unfolds, a different picture emerges. Synthesia's avatars are not built to mimic celebrities' faces or voices. Instead, they're a tool companies use to create internal training videos modeled on their own employees. In other words, there was never any real overlap with the "celebrity impersonation market" the team had feared. Synthesia says this approach is up to 10 times cheaper than traditional video shoots, produces videos instantly without any filming, and can generate versions that speak multiple languages.

What this means

Synthesia is a company founded in London in 2017 that has focused on using AI to create videos of people speaking on camera. It's often grouped with general-purpose video generation models like Sora or Veo that can produce any scene imaginable, but what it actually builds is different. Synthesia's avatars aren't imagined faces—they're built from real actors who were filmed and gave their consent. They're used for things like corporate training videos or internal company announcements, recreating the presence of an "ordinary employee" explaining something, without any camera needed.

This is exactly where the impersonator's worries diverge from Synthesia's actual business. Impersonating celebrities on stage and producing repetitive instructional videos in place of a corporate trainer are simply different markets. Through this video, Synthesia directly addresses the common concern that "AI avatars are taking creators' jobs," while emphasizing that its avatars are built for workplace communication rather than entertainment.

Why it matters

Synthesia rolled out seven new features at once in July, including role-play and dubbing capabilities, and this video can be seen as an extension of that push—promotional content aimed at explaining to the public just how far avatar technology has come, in accessible terms. With competitors like Higgsfield rapidly expanding in the AI avatar market, Synthesia likely felt it needed to clearly distinguish what its technology is actually targeting. The celebrity impersonation industry and enterprise AI avatars seem likely to remain on separate tracks for the foreseeable future.