Synthesia is moving beyond AI generated training videos with the launch of Roleplay Sessions, a new platform designed to help employees practise workplace conversations with interactive AI avatars.
The British artificial intelligence company built its business by helping enterprises produce professional training videos quickly and at a lower cost than traditional corporate content. Its latest product introduces a more active learning experience, allowing users to speak directly with an AI character that responds, challenges their answers and evaluates their performance.
Roleplay Sessions is intended for situations where employees need more than written instructions or recorded demonstrations. Companies can use the platform to simulate sales pitches, customer complaints, leadership discussions and performance reviews.
After each conversation, the system assesses the participant using a predefined evaluation framework. Managers can then review performance data to identify strengths, weaknesses and areas that may require additional coaching.
Traditional corporate training often focuses on delivering information through documents, presentations or videos. While these formats can explain a process, employees may still struggle to apply what they have learned during real workplace interactions.
Synthesia believes practice and feedback can help close that gap.
With Roleplay Sessions, an employee can participate in a realistic conversation without needing another person to act as a customer, manager or colleague. The AI avatar can react to the employee’s responses and adjust the discussion as it progresses.
A sales representative, for example, could practise introducing a product to a difficult customer. A manager could rehearse delivering sensitive feedback to an employee. Customer support workers could prepare for complaints or emotionally charged conversations.
These simulations allow workers to repeat challenging scenarios in a controlled environment before facing similar situations in the real world.
The launch also reflects Synthesia’s effort to become more than an AI video creation company.
The startup’s avatar and voice technologies remain central to the product, while OpenAI provides the underlying reasoning capabilities used during the interactive conversations. Synthesia is adding its own evaluation systems, performance rubrics and analytics tools around that technology.
This data layer could make the platform particularly valuable to large organisations. Instead of simply confirming that employees completed a training video, companies could measure how well workers performed during simulated conversations.
A business could ask its entire sales team to complete the same exercise and then analyse results across departments, regions or individual employees. Managers could use that information to identify coaching needs and compare skill levels throughout the organisation.
The approach positions Synthesia closer to the performance management and employee development market, rather than limiting the company to content production.
Sales and leadership development are currently among the most popular applications for Roleplay Sessions.
Companies can create their own scenarios using existing internal documents, sales materials and training guidelines. Synthesia also offers consulting support for organisations that want customised exercises designed around specific products, policies or workplace situations.
The company says several major businesses are already using the technology through large commercial deployments. These early customers reportedly include a leading European company, a major Fortune 100 business and one of the world’s largest recruitment companies. Their identities have not been publicly disclosed.
Soft skills training is expected to remain one of the platform’s main areas of focus. Communication, negotiation, conflict management and leadership can be difficult to teach through passive content because improvement often depends on repeated practice.
Roleplay Sessions is the first product within a wider Sessions platform that Synthesia plans to develop.
Future formats may include job interview preparation and candidate screening. These tools could allow applicants to practise interviews while helping employers evaluate candidates through structured AI led conversations.
The company is initially offering Roleplay Sessions to enterprise customers. It eventually plans to make the technology available to smaller businesses, individual professionals and potentially educational institutions.
Falling AI computing costs could help support that expansion by making interactive sessions more affordable for a wider range of users.
Synthesia’s latest move highlights a broader change in enterprise artificial intelligence. Companies are increasingly looking beyond impressive AI demonstrations and focusing on measurable business results.
For Synthesia, the next stage of AI training is not simply creating content faster. It is showing whether employees can apply what they have learned when the conversation becomes real.
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