Big tech companies are clear that, to promote their AI services, need content creators. At the same time, a good part of content creation goes through influencers created with AI. In case we thought that the loop couldn’t be solved, there are companies obsessed with achieving another goal: that content creators can create their own content creators… with AI.
Heygen. If you’re not into the world of digital avatars, Heygen may not sound familiar to you, but the Los Angeles-based company is reliving the ChatGPT moment, but with avatars.
Founded in 2020 as MovioLab, with Joshua Xu as CEO and a valuation of more than $500 million, Heygen competes head-to-head with giants like runway e ElevenLabs in the generative video space.
Avatar V. Heygen has been obsessed with creating the best avatar model for years. And this week they published what, according to them, is the most advanced model in the world, Avatar V.
They have data to support it, since as the company shows in a 30 page paperthe company has solved micro-expressions, gestures and lip synchronization (especially at the rhythm level) better than the rest.
There is a real war between American and Chinese companies over digital avatars.
a real war. As the paper shows, Heygen is not alone. Kling AI, Veo 3, OmniHuman, Seedance… Some of the most relevant companies worldwide are betting on the generation of avatars. And it’s not a random whim.
Heygen has more than 40,000 companies paying for corporate video generation using avatars. The barrier to entry is falling lower and lower, the savings compared to productions with influencers are quantifiable, and production times are compressed from weeks to minutes. The key is to offer the most competitive model and an interface that works at the drop of a hat.
What’s coming. Currently, avatars work with a handicap: their latency. The direction set by the paper is clear: solve this problem to achieve an avatar connected to LLMs in order to maintain conversations in real time (meetings, interviews, conferences…).
The avatar industry is still emerging, but winning it is essential for a goal that AI Big Tech wants in the future: for AI to stop being a chatbot and become as close to a person as possible.
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