Synthesia, a British AI training company, has expanded its offerings by introducing Roleplay Sessions, an interactive platform where employees can practice high-stakes conversations with an AI avatar. The new product allows users to simulate scenarios such as sales pitches, performance reviews, and customer complaints, with the AI providing feedback and scoring based on a rubric. This marks the first release under Synthesia’s broader 'Sessions' platform, which aims to include other formats like job interviews and candidate screening. The launch comes amid growing corporate interest in evaluating the effectiveness of AI investments. According to a meta-analysis of learning research, Synthesia argues that most corporate training fails to change behavior, emphasizing the need for practice and feedback. "Video performs way better than text or sending out a document," said Synthesia CEO Victor Riparbelli. "But for most things, we learn the best by actually practicing something rather than just reading it." Roleplay also strengthens Synthesia’s position as a performance-management platform. While the company’s avatar and voice technology are proprietary, the underlying reasoning intelligence is from OpenAI. By adding rubrics, performance data, and analytics, Synthesia is positioning itself as a performance-management platform with a video front end. "From a managerial executive layer, we’re seeing huge interest in mapping out the talent in their company in a way that’s been really difficult to do before," Riparbelli said. "If you have your entire sales team practice with an AI role player, you can get very granular data on how your sales force is doing overall." Synthesia already has early Roleplay customers, including one of the top three companies by market cap in Europe, one of the top five Fortune 100, and one of the biggest recruitment companies in the world. The two most popular use cases involve training sales teams and leadership, focusing on soft skills. Customers can either create their own training programs or work with Synthesia consultants to build bespoke solutions. Roleplay is currently an enterprise offering, but the company plans to expand to small businesses, prosumers, and educational institutions as inference costs decrease. Riparbelli believes products like Roleplay represent the next phase of enterprise AI adoption, where companies prioritize measurable outcomes over flashy demos.
Source: techcrunch
