TechCrunch Reporter Builds Interactive Synthesia AI Avatar

TechCrunch reporter Dominic-Madori Davis created an interactive digital version of herself using Synthesia’s AI avatar platform to test how conversational avatars might work in media and corporate communication. Synthesia photographed her and recorded about two minutes of her voice, then produced personal avatars that can read scripts and interactive versions that can listen and respond. The conversational avatar was trained on one of her articles and combines speech-to-text, an agentic language model, video generation and text-to-speech. Synthesia also offers enterprise products such as Roleplay Sessions, where employees practice tasks like sales pitches with responsive avatars that can score their performance. The company allows customers to use its own voice and video models or alternatives from providers including ElevenLabs, Google and OpenAI, with flexible hosting options.

TechCrunch AI, Dominic-Madori Davis – I created an interactive digital avatar of myself — and you can talk to it – 26th September 2026