Synthesia builds interactive avatar of TechCrunch reporter for her story
The interactive avatar, embedded in a TechCrunch article, answers questions about reporter Dominic-Madori Davis's story on startup fraud and redirects everything else back to it.
Synthesia built an interactive digital avatar of TechCrunch reporter Dominic-Madori Davis, TechCrunch said. Readers can question the avatar about her story on venture-backed startup fraud, using voice and text chat embedded directly in the article.
Davis, who wrote the piece, said she visited Synthesia's New York office, where staff photographed her repeatedly and recorded a two-minute voice sample. She said the company's team needed a couple of days to finish the avatar. It combines Synthesia's own video and voice models with outside options from Cartesia, ElevenLabs, Google or OpenAI for other components, according to Davis.
The avatar is deterministic, meaning it answers only questions tied to the article and steers everything else back to the story, Davis said. "I asked it questions like where I was before TechCrunch and what part of New York I lived in, but each time it directed me back to the story," she wrote.
Readers reach the avatar by pressing "start in a new window" on the article itself. TechCrunch did not disclose what the project cost or whether Synthesia plans to offer the same interactive format to other outlets.