Synthesia launched an option to make AI-generated avatars by recording footage of yourself with a webcam or your phone.
Synthesia
Synthesia, a British artificial intelligence startup, on Monday showed off a slew of new product updates including the ability to create your own Apple-style key presentations with AI avatars by using just a laptop webcam or your phone.
The seven-year-old firm, which is backed by Nvidia, said the new product updates will make it more of an all-encompassing video production suite for large companies, rather than just a platform that offers users the ability to create AI-generated avatars.
Among the new updates Synthesia is launching is the ability to produce AI avatars using webcams or a phone, “full body” avatars with hands and arms, and a screen recording tool that shows an AI avatar guiding you through what you’re watching.
What is Synthesia?
Synthesia, which says it’s used by nearly half of the Fortfune 500, uses AI avatars for all kinds of purposes.
These can range from creating tailored training videos to guide employees around certain processes, or generating promotional material that can be shown in the form of a video rather than an email or other textual communications.
But that hasn’t always been the case. According to co-founder and CEO Victor Riparbelli, in the first three years of the company’s story, Synthesia actually started out trying to sell its technology to Hollywood agencies and big-budget video production companies. The firm used computer vision for an AI dubbing tool that made mouth movements more lifelike for different languages.
“What we figured out was that the quality threshold to do anything with these guys was so big, no matter what we do, we’ll be a very small part of a much bigger process,” Riparbelli told CNBC in an interview at the firm’s London office.
“What was more interesting was the democratization aspect of: There are millions of people in the world who want to make video, but they’re not making video today because they don’t have the budget.”
In an Apple-style keynote, Synthesia’s CEO unveiled the firm’s new products, touting them as a more productivity-focused suite of tools for use by businesses, rather than just a platform that offers AI avatars.
Apple-style keynotes with a webcam
One of the biggest new features the firm showed off was an option to make AI-generated avatars by recording less than five minutes of footage using a webcam or your phone. You can also clone your voice to have the avatars speak in multiple different languages
Typically, to make an AI avatar using Synthesia’s platform, you have to go into a studio in-person. Human actors go into a recording booth, record their voice, and perform lines in front of a green screen on an actual filming set.
This is all training data to provide Synthesia’s AI algorithm with the facial and vocal nuances it needs to come up with humanlike avatars that speak in an expressive way. Earlier this year, Synthesia debuted new expressive avatars that can convey human emotions, including happiness, sadness, and frustration.
But now, Synthesia is introducing new software which will make it easier for users to produce a digital version of themselves from anywhere, using just a webcam and Synthesia’s software.
The company is also launching the ability to create full-body avatars. This is different to Synthesia’s current avatars, which are limited to just portrait view. Now, you can go into a studio with dozens of cameras, sensors and lights all around you to make avatars that can move their hands.
Generating hands is something that’s traditionally hard for AI to do — often because hands are only a small part of the human body and not typically the focus in visual content.
Synthesia also debuted the option to play videos of AI avatars speaking in any language they like, whether it’s English, French, German, or Chinese.
In the future, Synthesia says, it will be able to tailor AI avatars for different countries: For example, a Nigerian avatar running a user through a tutorial rather than an American.
Synthesia’s AI video assistant can produce summaries of entire articles and documents.
Synthesia
Synthesia also launched a new AI video assistant which can produce summaries of entire articles and documents. This could be a human resources specialist making a quick video explaining company benefits packages, for example.
Synthesia’s screen recording tool shows an AI avatar guiding you through what you’re watching.
Synthesia
Another big feature the company is rolling out is a new screen recording tool, which shows an AI avatar guiding you through what you’re watching.
Not chasing a ‘PR moment’
In CNBC’s interview with him, Riparbelli characterized what Synthesia is trying to do as an enterprise-focused product overhaul, which would make it more akin to giants like Microsoft, Salesforce, and Zoom in the enterprise category.
“The world has been blown away by this stuff for the last 12 to 18 to 24 months, which is awesome,” Riparbelli told CNBC.
“But now we have experimented a lot, and we have found out the right use cases for these technologies that have lasting business value. They’re not like just a short-term PR moment.”
“You need to do that business goal of reducing customer support tickets by showing videos instead of text; or sell by making videos instead of just sending out emails,” he added.
“Now people are creating workflows around that. They need better ways to achieve their business goals, not just an interface with AI models. That’s where we’re going as a company.”
The company’s competitors include AI video tools Veed, Colossyan, Elai, and HeyGen. And Chinese-owned social media app TikTok also recently debuted Symphony Assistant, a product that allows creators to make their own AI avatars.
The company makes money through a number of subscription pricing plans ranging from $22 for a “starter” plan and $67 for a “creator” plan, to custom “enterprise” plans where pricing is based on negotiations with Synthesia’s sales team.
The Huawei flagship store and the Apple flagship store at Nanjing Road Pedestrian Street in Shanghai, China, Sept. 2, 2024.
Cfoto | Future Publishing | Getty Images
Huawei reclaimed the top spot in China’s smartphone market in the second quarter of the year, while Apple returned to growth in the country — one of its most critical markets — data released by technology market analyst firm Canalys showed on Monday.
Huawei shipped 12.2 million smartphones in China in the three months ended June, a rise of 15% year on year — equating to 18% market share. It’s the first time Huawei has been the biggest player by market share in China since the first quarter of 2024, according to Canalys.
Apple, meanwhile, shipped 10.1 million smartphones in the quarter in China, up 4% year on year and ranking fifth. It is the first time Apple has recorded growth in China since the fourth quarter of 2023, Canalys said.
Shipments represent the number of devices sent to retailers. They do no equate directly to sales but are a gauge of demand.
The numbers come ahead of Apple’s quarterly earnings release this week, with investors watching the company’s performance in China, a market where the Cupertino giant has faced significant challenges, including intense competition from Huawei and other local players such as Xiaomi.
Huawei, which made a comeback at the end of 2023 after its smartphone business was crippled by U.S. sanctions, has eaten away at Apple’s share.
Apple’s return to growth in China will be a welcome sign for investors. The U.S. tech giant “strategically adjusted its pricing” for the iPhone 16 series in China, which helped it grow, Canalys said. Chinese e-commerce firms discounted Apple’s iPhone 16 models during the quarter. And Apple itself also increased trade-in prices for some iPhone models.
Meanwhile, competition in China has intensified. Huawei has aggressively launched various smartphones in the past year and has started to roll out HarmonyOS 5, its self-developed operating system, across various devices. It is a rival to Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS.
“This move is expected to accelerate the expansion of its independent ecosystem’s user base, while also placing greater demands on system compatibility and user experience,” Lucas Zhong, analyst at Canalys, said in a press release.
Alibaba announced plans to release a pair of smart glasses powered by its AI models. The Quark AI Glasses are Alibaba’s first foray into the smart glasses product category.
Alibaba
Alibaba on Monday unveiled a pair of smart glasses powered by its artificial intelligence models, marking the Chinese firm’s first foray into the product category.
The e-commerce giant said the Quark AI Glasses will be launched in China by the end of 2025 with hardware powered by the firm’s Qwen large language model and its advanced AI assistant called Quark.
The Hangzhou, headquartered company is one of the leaders in China’s AI space, aggressively launching new models with capabilities that compete with Western counterparts like OpenAI.
Many tech companies see wearables, specifically glasses, as the next frontier in computing alongside the smartphone. Quark, which was updated this year, is currently available as an app in China. Alibaba is stepping into the hardware game as a way to distribute the app more widely.
The Quark AI Glasses are Alibaba’s answer to Meta’s smart glasses that were designed in collaboration with Ray-Ban. The Chinese tech giant will also now compete with Chinese consumer electronics player Xiaomi who this year released its own AI glasses.
Alibaba said its glasses will support hands-free calling, music streaming, real-time language translation, and meeting transcription. The glasses also feature a built-in camera.
Alibaba owns a range of different services in China from mapping to an online travel agent. Its affiliate company Ant Group also runs the widely-used Alipay mobile service. Alibaba said users will be able to use a navigation service via the glasses, pay with Alipay and compare prices on Taobao, its China e-commerce platform.
The firm has yet to release other details such as the price and technical specifications.
A Samsung flag flies outside the company office in Seoul, South Korea on February 05, 2024.
Chung Sung-jun | Getty Images News | Getty Images
Samsung Electronics has entered into a $16.5 billion contract for supplying semiconductors to a major company, a regulatory filing by the South Korean company showed Monday.
The memory chipmaker, which did not name the counterparty, mentioned in its filing that the effective start date of the contract was July 26, 2024 — receipt of orders — and its end date was Dec. 31, 2033.
Samsung declined to comment on details regarding the counterparty.
The company said that details of the deal, including the name of the counterparty, will not be disclosed until the end of 2033, citing a request from the second party “to protect trade secrets,” according to a Google translation of the filing in Korean.
“Since the main contents of the contract have been not been disclosed due to the need to maintain business confidentiality, investors are advised to invest carefully considering the possibility of changes or termination of the contract,” the company said. Its shares were up nearly 3% in early trading.
Local South Korean media outlets have said that American chip firm Qualcomm could potentially place an order for Samsung’s 2 nanometer chips.
While Qualcomm is a possibility, given its potential 2 nanometer project with Samsung, Tesla seems the more probable customer, Ray Wang, research director of semiconductors, supply chain and emerging technology at The Futurum Group, told CNBC
Samsung’s foundry service manufactures chips based on designs provided by other companies. It is the second largest provider of foundry services globally, behind Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company.
The company said in April that it was aiming for its foundry business to start mass production of its next-generation 2 nanometer and secure major orders for the advanced product. In semiconductor technology, smaller nanometer sizes signify more compact transistor designs, which lead to greater processing power and efficiency.
Samsung, which is set to deliver earnings on Thursday, expects its second-quarter profit to more than halve. An analyst previously told CNBC that the disappointing forecast was due to weak orders for its foundry business and as the company has struggled to capture AI demand for its memory business.
The company has fallen behind competitors SK Hynix and Micron in high-bandwidth memory chips — an advanced type of memory used in AI chipsets.
SK Hynix, the leader in HBM, has become the main supplier of these chips to American AI behemoth Nvidia. While Samsung has reportedly been working to get the latest version of its HBM chips certified by Nvidia, a report from a local outlet suggests these plans have been pushed back to at least September.