Synthesia’s AI clones are more expressive than ever. Soon they’ll be able to talk back.

Earlier this summer, I walked through the glassy lobby of a fancy office in London, into an elevator, and then along a corridor into a clean, carpeted room. Natural light flooded in through its windows, and a large pair of umbrella-like lighting rigs made the room even brighter. I tried not to squint as I took my place in front of a tripod equipped with a large camera and a laptop displaying an autocue. I took a deep breath and started to read out the script. Im not a newsreader or an actor auditioning for a movieI was visiting the AI company Synthesia to give it what it needed to create a hyperrealistic AI-generated avatar of me. The companys avatars are a decent barometer of just how dizzying progress has been in AI over the past few years, so I was curious just how accurately its latest AI model, introduced last month, could replicate me. When Synthesia launched in 2017, its primary purpose was to match AI versions of real human facesfor example, the former footballer David Beckhamwith dubbed voices speaking in different languages. A few years later, in 2020, it started giving the companies that signed up for its services the opportunity to make professional-level presentation videos starring either AI versions of staff members or consenting actors. *Reporting by Technologyreview.*