Market Study - Trends and Innovations in Digital Avatars

This report examines the impact of emerging technologies on avatar development and utilization. It explores advancements in GPUs, connectivity, real-time rendering, motion-capture, AI, VR, and AR that enhance avatars' realism and interactivity. The report also delves into the growing use of generative AI for avatar customization and animation, highlighting platforms like Ready Player Me. Additionally, it presents a case study of Xerox's collaboration with Synthesia, demonstrating significant improvements in training video production efficiency and engagement. The scope covers technological trends, market applications, and practical outcomes in the avatar industry.

Driving Force #1: Emerging Technologies Improve Avatars’ Appearances and Behaviors

• Advancements in graphical processing units (GPUs) enable companies to produce avatars with highly vivid and detailed appearances.
• Improvements in high-speed connectivity and real-time rendering enable avatars to interact with customers in real time.
• Innovations in facial and body motion-capture enable the facial expressions and physical movements of avatars to be accurately modelled from those of real actors.
• Breakthroughs in AI technology enable avatars to precisely understand the customer’s intent and deliver the appropriate responses to them.
• Progress in VR and AR hardware and software enable immersive environments in which customers can interact with avatars in ways that simulate real-life scenarios.

Market Trend #1: Using Generative AI Technologies to Automatically Create and Customize Avatars

• Generative AI is being used more and more in the process of avatar creation and customization. Companies like Ready Player Me allow users to customize their avatars’ outfits (and eventually the avatars’ facial and body structures) by entering a short phrase such as “jacket with American flag pattern.”
• Generative AI is also used in animating the avatars’ facial expressions and body movements by analyzing pre-recorded motion capture data and generating similar facial and physical movements in the avatars.
• The avatars’ text and vocal outputs can also be synthesized using generative AI by predicting the most appropriate response based on customer inputs, and generating human-like speech to vocalize the response in a natural-sounding manner.

Case Study #1: Xerox Uses Synthesia’s Avatar Video Production Capabilities to Enhance Employee Training

Background: Synthesia is an enterprise video production platform that enables automatic video creation and translation using AI avatars and voiceover.

Objective: Xerox was looking to accelerate and optimize the video production process for its sales training videos. They were facing challenges such as high production costs, difficulties in localizing to different languages, and lack of flexibility in updating the videos once created.

Results: Using the Synthesia platform, Xerox was able to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of its video production process, achieving results such as cutting production costs by 50% per video, delivering videos 30% faster, and training 1000+ sales representatives using these videos with higher engagement and participation than before.