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For years, Synthesia\u2019s<\/a> pitch was to use AI to help enterprises create interactive training videos, in minutes, for a fraction of the cost normally associated with developing corporate educational materials. The startup\u2019s newest product is making a different bet \u2014 that the real moat in enterprise AI isn\u2019t just generating content, but in proving that it worked.\u00a0<\/p>\n On Wednesday, the British startup launched Roleplay Sessions<\/a>, an interactive training product where employees can practice high-stakes conversations like sales pitches, performance reviews, and customer complaints with an AI avatar that talks back, pushes back, and then scores them against a rubric.\u00a0<\/p>\n Roleplay is the first release under a broader \u201cSessions\u201d platform Synthesia plans to expand into other formats, including job interviews and candidate screening, TechCrunch has exclusively learned.\u00a0<\/p>\n The launch comes as enterprises take a harder look at whether their AI spend is paying off. Citing a meta-analysis of learning research<\/a>, Synthesia argues that most corporate training \u2014 including, implicitly, its own core video product \u2014 stops short of actually changing behavior. The trainings tend to inform and demonstrate, but what really pushes someone into actually learning something is doing that thing, along with feedback.<\/p>\n \u201cVideo performs way better than text or sending out a document,\u201d Synthesia CEO and co-founder Victor Riparbelli told TechCrunch. \u201cBut for most things, we learn the best by actually practicing something rather than just reading it.\u201d<\/p>\n Roleplay also moves Synthesia into a more defensible position. The company\u2019s avatar and voice technology are proprietary, but the underlying reasoning intelligence is OpenAI\u2019s. By tacking on a layer that includes rubrics, performance data, and analytics, Synthesia is positioning itself less as an AI avatar company and more as a performance-management platform with a video front end.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cFrom a managerial executive layer, we\u2019re seeing huge interest in mapping out the talent in their company in a way that\u2019s been really difficult to do before,\u201d Riparbelli said. \u201cIf 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.\u201d<\/p>\n Synthesia already has a few early Roleplay customers with scaled commercial rollouts, including \u201cone 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,\u201d per a company spokesperson.\u00a0<\/p>\n The two most popular use cases involve training sales teams and leadership \u2014 programs like practicing how to sell a product or have a difficult conversation. Much of it is soft skills training, Riparbelli said.\u00a0<\/p>\n As with Synthesia\u2019s main product, customers can either create their own training programs on the platform or enlist the help of Synthesia\u2019s consultants to build a bespoke solution that relies in part on whatever training documents and context the company already has.\u00a0<\/p>\n Roleplay is an enterprise offering for now, but the goal is to offer it more widely to small businesses, prosumers, and potentially educational institutions in the next few months as inference costs continue to fall. Riparbelli believes products like Roleplay represent the next phase of enterprise AI adoption, where companies care less about whether AI looks good in a social media demo and more about proving it generates measurable business outcomes.\u00a0<\/p>\n<\/div>\n When you purchase through links in our articles, we may earn a small commission<\/a>. This doesn\u2019t affect our editorial independence.<\/em><\/p>\n