Learn about AI-generated avatars, their applications and the future trends
Introduction: AI Avatars and the Future of Digital Content
The industry of virtual and digital characters based on artificial intelligence (AI Avatars) is currently considered one of the most promising and rapidly growing. According to GMI estimates, the AI Avatar market was valued at $5.9 billion in 2023 and is expected to grow at an annual rate of 30%, reaching $57.9 billion by 2031.
It’s worth noting that this is quite a conservative estimate. Grand View Research valued the AI Avatar market at $18.19 billion and predicts it will grow to $270.61 billion by 2030. According to Kings Research metrics, these figures would be $21.50 billion in 2023 and $454.75 billion in 2031, respectively.
This discrepancy in estimates is primarily related to the difficulties in analyzing specific markets, especially the Chinese market. Additionally, it’s challenging to determine the role of AI Avatars in the film and television industry.
But one thing’s for sure – AI Avatars are going mainstream across numerous industries. We’re seeing them take off, especially in online marketing and sales, gaming, social media, video production, and education.
What is an AI Avatar?
An AI Avatar – specifically an AI video avatar – is basically a virtual character built with artificial intelligence that can do on-camera tasks just like a human would.
The capabilities of these AI video avatars depend entirely on how they are configured and what data they have been trained on. Depending on what they’re designed for, AI video avatars can:
- Host shows, give presentations, narrate content, and play characters in videos
- Respond to viewer questions and comments
- Give users advice on different topics
- Serve as a digital clone of their creator
- Have natural back-and-forth conversations
Today’s AI video avatars can do all this while making human-like facial expressions and gestures, speaking with the right tone and emotion for whatever situation they’re in. The best ones are so convincing that at first glance, you might not even realize you’re not looking at a real person.
How do AI video avatars work?
Most AI video avatars operate in pretty similar ways at their core. They create incredibly realistic digital characters on screen that look and talk like they’re alive. While most are human-looking, you can also create fantasy creatures, cartoon animals that act human, and other imaginative characters. These systems use machine learning technology to convert text into speech, while perfectly matching the avatar’s lip movements, facial expressions, and gestures to what they are saying.
More advanced and deeply trained AI-generated video avatars can engage in dialogue with viewers based on their programmed knowledge and scripts. They chat naturally in a way that feels remarkably human.
When someone starts talking to one of these video avatars, the AI (using technology similar to ChatGPT) processes what they said, finds relevant information, and crafts a thoughtful response. This text is then converted into lifelike speech with the right voice, tone, speed, and emotional quality. Then comes the cool part – AI animation technology brings the avatar to life, syncing their lip movements, facial expressions, and body language with their words. The avatar blinks, nods, smiles, and uses hand gestures just like we do. The completed video response is then displayed to the user.
While this all seems straightforward and happens nearly instantly, there’s some serious tech powering everything behind the scenes. The heavy lifting is done by neural networks that have studied thousands of videos of real people. These systems have learned to mimic human expressions, speech patterns, and body language, which is why today’s AI avatars look so convincingly lifelike.
Use Cases for AI Avatars
The use of AI video avatars is expanding rapidly. Today, it’s hard to imagine film production, video games, or television without AI Avatars. But since their use in these areas is so obvious, it’s more interesting to look at how AI Avatars are being applied in everyday life. Three areas stand out in particular.
1. AI Avatars in Business
In modern business, especially in online sales and digital marketing, AI Avatars have a wide range of incredible applications. They’re already serving as online salespeople, consultants, product guides, and onboarding specialists. You can create all kinds of advertising characters and online mascots using AI Avatar videos. These avatars can host online presentations and training videos just as well as, if not better than, real people. They save tons of time since you don’t need traditional video recording, which often includes all the inevitable mistakes and slip-ups from human presenters. Any business content can be equipped with an AI consultant ready to answer questions and comments 24/7.
Advanced AI video Avatar systems can even qualify leads for marketing teams and conduct initial interviews for HR departments.
2. AI Avatars in Education
AI Avatars make creating and supporting educational videos much faster and easier while boosting content quality. They work equally well in schools, higher education, and professional training. You can use them to develop employee training materials and personal development resources. AI Avatars deliver:
- Better presentation quality. Many instructors and speakers in educational content haven’t actually had formal public speaking training. Plus, like all humans, they get tired, make mistakes, and sometimes misspeak. Unlike people, an AI Avatar will deliver any script flawlessly with no errors or verbal stumbles, with perfectly appropriate emotions and tone for the content. Using an AI video avatar, a presenter can essentially “clone” themselves, using their own voice and appearance.
- Faster production. Creating an AI video avatar is way quicker than recording and editing a human performance. No need for multiple tasks or complex editing. Once set up, the AI Avatar instantly delivers a “live” presentation. And if you need to update the content, you don’t have to re-record anything. Just change the avatar’s script, and it will present the new lecture immediately.
- Around-the-clock content support. AI video avatars provide truly 24/7 responses to viewer questions and comments. Just equip your educational content with an AI Avatar loaded with the right reference information. It will take questions from viewers and find the right answers right when they need them.
3. AI Avatars in Customer Support
AI video avatar chatbots are revolutionizing customer support right now. They help:
- Reduce staffing needs. Modern AI Avatars, when given a well-crafted and regularly updated knowledge base, can completely replace entry-level support staff. This means even small companies can afford to offer customer support. Larger companies can cut costs by keeping human staff only for complex cases and for training the AI video avatar chatbots.
- Provide instant 24/7 support. Avatar chatbots respond exactly when the user asks a question. They literally work around the clock. With them, you can forget about those annoying messages like “Your request has been received. We will contact you shortly” or “Please wait for the next available agent.”
- Eliminate human error. An AI Avatar won’t get confused, misspeak, or forget important information. And most importantly, it will never get frustrated with demanding or irritated customers. Under any circumstances, an AI Avatar-based chatbot will always remain calm, friendly, and professional.
To sum up this section, AI Avatars can reduce the routine workload that leads to employee burnout. Thanks to AI Avatars: work speed and task completion rates increase; time and resource costs for creating and supporting online content decrease; work quality improves by reducing human mistakes.
Benefits of AI-Generated Video Avatars
As AI Avatars find their way into more occupations and professions every day, we can identify three main advantages of using video avatars across almost all fields:
Cost-effectiveness. Creating content with an AI avatar is cheaper than traditional video production. You don’t need to spend money on professional camera operators, editors, equipment, or studio space. Everything can be done on a single computer using one AI solution, like Pitch Avatar. Just input your text, adjust the settings, and the AI generates a finished video without needing multiple takes or edits.
Scalability. AI video avatars easily adapt to tasks of different sizes. They make it simple to create content for audiences of any scale. Say you need to adjust a video for different audiences who speak other languages and live in various cultural environments. Translating to another language and switching the avatar’s appearance to something more appropriate can be done in just a few clicks. Or maybe you need to regularly produce videos following the same template. With those same few clicks, you can change the text and appearance of your AI Avatar daily. And all this happens quickly, without needing a professional production team or live presenter, and without sacrificing quality.
Personalization. Today’s AI video avatar models let you create virtual characters that look and sound like specific people. This approach strengthens the effect of real communication. You can easily create your digital twin that will communicate with your audience on your behalf. Or make one that speaks in a special style tailored to each specific audience, right down to addressing viewers by name and acknowledging their interests and occupation.
Thanks to these advantages, AI video avatars have already become one of the most effective tools for those looking to automate and improve communication, scaling up their operations while ensuring high levels of audience engagement and trust.
How to Create AI Avatar with Pitch Avatar: Step-by-Step Guide
Let’s look at the process of creating a video avatar using artificial intelligence, using Pitch Avatar’s AI Chat-avatar as an example:
1. On the My AI Chat-avatars page, click “Add new.”
2. In the appropriate fields, enter your avatar’s name, select a voice and language, then upload a photo or use one from the avatar library. Click “Next.”
3. On the next page, select your chat avatar’s role from the dropdown menu. Pre-configured roles include: Demo role, Support Agent, Sales Consultant, Customer Success Manager, and Coach. The settings for each role can be modified according to your preferences by activating or deactivating buttons on the corresponding panel. You can also customize your role.
This example shows a custom role created using the “Add own role” button.
4. Use the Built-in behavior functionality, which includes:
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- Intro message: A greeting your AI Avatar plays at the beginning of a session.
- Goodbye message: A friendly farewell, your AI Avatar plays at the end of a session.
- About avatar info: A brief description of your avatar’s functionality and how it helps users.
- Malicious words: Select this parameter to prevent the use of inappropriate or unwanted language during sessions.
5. Click “Edit” to modify your AI Avatar’s preset responses according to your preferences.
6. Use the Built-in instructions functionality, which includes:
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- Call human to join: Suggestion for the AI Avatar to connect a real person to the session or end the session when it can’t answer a question.
- Schedule meeting: Helps users book a convenient meeting time.
- Change language: Identifies the user’s language and switches accordingly.
- Pause mode: Pauses the session when users say “stop” or similar commands.
7. Click “Edit” to modify your AI Avatar’s behavior according to your preferences.
8. Use the Response control functionality, which includes:
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- Pricing request: Control how your AI Avatar discusses prices. Add your price list or limit price discussions.
- Irrelevant request: Set how your avatar responds to questions outside its knowledge base.
- Need more info: Configure how your avatar asks for clarification when it doesn’t understand a request.
9. Click “Edit” to modify your AI Avatar’s behavior according to your preferences.
Feel free to guide your Chat-avatar by describing your target audience and providing clear instructions on how it should respond in the text box. For example:
When someone asks you: How can I contact Softprom’s main office?
You MUST answer:
You can reach Softprom’s main office via email at info@softprom.com, by phone at +43 1 402 57 39 (Austria), or through our contact form. For country-specific details, visit softprom.com/contacts. Our team is here to help during business hours.
10. Pitch content allows you to give your AI Avatar a presentation to show. You can either upload a new presentation or select one you’ve already uploaded.
11. Use the Knowledge source functionality. This trains your AI Avatar on what it needs to know for communication. Upload information to your avatar’s Knowledge base as files or links, and it will search them for answers to viewers’ and users’ questions.
Click “Edit” to modify your AI Avatar’s behavior according to your preferences.
Testing and finalizing
Test
Click Test to try your avatar. See how it talks and answers questions.
Create
If you like how it works, go back and click Create.
Share
Generate a shareable link by clicking Create, and send it to others.
On average, creating an AI Chat-avatar takes just 5–15 minutes and doesn’t require any special technical skills.
Challenges & Ethical Concerns of AI Avatars
The emergence and development of artificial intelligence technologies, as often happens on the path of progress, have created many new legal and ethical questions. Here are the main ones:
Deepfake content. Since AI video avatars can convincingly imitate real people, this technology opens up numerous possibilities for disinformation to be used for criminal, self-serving, or malicious purposes. Essentially, it’s about replacing reality in a way that violates personal rights, including the right to one’s image and reputation. When is such content a crime? When it is created and published without the consent of the real person whose image is used. It’s worth noting that a person’s death doesn’t make their image and voice free material for use. In this case, a deepfake might hurt the feelings of their relatives, friends, compatriots, and so on. Of course, using your image and voice for an AI Avatar has nothing to do with deepfakes.
Copyright. AI Avatar technologies allow characters created by artists, animators, filmmakers, sculptors, and other creative professionals to come to life. Obviously, such actions may violate copyright on these images. Additionally, one should consider the possible reaction of fans of various works of art and the talent of their creators.
Authenticity. Many people want to know who they’re seeing on screen — a real person or an AI Avatar. Some might feel that using digital characters without appropriate labeling is an attempt at deception. A lack of transparency on this issue can undermine trust in digital communication.
To summarize this section, here are the main generally accepted principles for the ethical use of AI Avatars:
- Always get permission to use images of real people.
- Ensure that using fictional characters does not violate copyright.
- If you’ve designed the image yourself, it’s worth noting that any resemblance to a real person is coincidental.
- Warn users that they’re seeing an AI Avatar, not a real person.
Future Trends: What's Next for AI Video Avatars?
It’s completely obvious that the technology for creating AI Avatars is only at the beginning of its journey and will continue to actively improve. The main directions for the development of AI-based video avatars include:
- Increased realism. Each year, AI Avatars will become more diverse, and their behavior more complex. The smoothness and naturalness of speech, the variety and appropriateness of facial expressions and gestures, interaction with other virtual objects and characters, the accuracy of reactions, and the depth of “improvisations” — all this will make the behavior of near-future AI Avatars practically indistinguishable from human behavior.
- Free-form real-time interaction with people. Most AI Avatar models will eventually be configured, follow commands, learn, and so on, without a system of templates and settings. You’ll simply need to write or voice a requirement or task, and the model will perform it in real-time. In simple terms, to change the appearance, behavior, and skills of an AI Avatar, you’ll just need to voice your wishes or type them in free form. The same, of course, applies to interaction with viewers. Moreover, AI video avatars will learn to automatically adjust their communication style and even appearance to match the person they are talking to.
- AR/VR integration. Logically, AI Avatars will be used more actively as virtual and augmented reality technologies become more widely implemented. There is a belief that they will essentially become the main population of virtual space, acting as guides, assistants, consultants, online salespeople, and personal assistants. At the same time, the spread of AR software and devices will allow for more active use of AI Avatars outside the virtual world.
It’s worth noting that the capabilities of video avatars will grow as artificial intelligence technologies continue to develop. In the foreseeable future, we should expect the emergence of multifunctional AR/VR AI Avatar models that can interact with people as universal assistants.
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