Episode 6: In this episode of AI Unveiled, I speak with Dominik Kovacs, founder and CEO of Colossyan, an AI video platform for workplace learning that generates life-like avatars.  Before starting Colossyan, Dominik was working at the intersection of AI and video, as the Co-Founder of Defudger, a visual content authentication platform for the insurance industry. So we start this episode by discussing his background and why he then chose to build technology to create synthetic videos.  Their customers use Colossyan for formal learning, sales enablement, onboarding, and other internal communications. He discusses two direct benefits: lower costs than studio-produced video and higher engagement than text and screen-recorded videos. This enables more localization and personalization and manages content chaos. Synthetic videos can be edited programmatically at a later time, so instead of creating duplicates, outdated videos are updated.  I asked Dominik about the end user’s perception, how close we are to passing the Turing test, and what the implications may be. I also asked Dominik to compare what Colossyan does to general text-to-video services like Runway and PikaLabs.  We then get into the nitty-gritty of the models that power life-like avatars and how one can create a personalized avatar. They just released the ability to do this over a webcam that is available to everyone.  This was a fun episode discussing an impressive technology, with many powerful use cases, but also many questions about deepfakes and ethics.  I hope you enjoy this episode. ----- Timestamps:  * 2:36 - The journey to generating personalized avatars * 6:59 - The future of workplace training * 12:55 - Evaluating a human’s perception of avatars * 19:05 - How to build a lifelike avatar * 23:09 - Measuring accuracy in the uncanny valley * 27:19 - Innovating AI with Product and Engineering ----- Links: * Colossyan ----- At Next47, we partner with founders boldly building products that power the world. Learn more at Next47.com