I created an interactive digital avatar of myself — and you can talk to it
techcrunch ·
TechCrunch reporter Dominic-Madori Davis collaborated with Synthesia to create an interactive digital avatar of herself, marking the first time the company has built such a tool for a journalist. The avatar was trained specifically on her article regarding fraud in venture-backed startups and utilizes a tech stack combining voice-to-text, agentic language models, and video animation. While the personal non-interactive version accurately mimicked her voice and appearance, the interactive model remained deterministic, redirecting all off-topic questions back to the assigned story. Friends and family found the experience both interesting and slightly creepy, noting that while the likeness was close, it lacked human spontaneity. This experiment prompted Davis to reflect on the future of journalism, questioning whether audiences would accept AI-presented news or if trust could ever be outsourced to machines. She observed that while digital twins might appeal in corporate settings for tasks like training, they risk creating a sense of uncanny valley or even 'AI psychosis' if made too conversational. Ultimately, Davis expressed mixed feelings about the technology, suggesting that Gen Z may struggle to adapt to this sci-fi reality despite its increasing prevalence.
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