Synthesia
The Future of AI Video
All images and videos © Synthesia
Synthesia is the world's leading AI video creation platform.
Before ChatGPT pushed generative AI into the mainstream, and six months before Synthesia became a tech unicorn, I joined this start-up as I saw an opportunity to push content creation into the future. As the Content Team Lead I was responsible for creating viral synthetic media campaigns to build brand awareness and drive product engagement.
In just one year, my team’s AI Explains AI TikTok profile amassed an incredible 85+ million views and over 700k followers – all with 100% original synthetic media content.
I led a team of video producers and creative technologists to produce livestreams, debates, tutorials and no-code experiments. I also worked with clients such as Deloitte and EY to integrate AI into their enterprise offerings.
Now valued at $1 billion, with over 50,000 customers using the company’s 125+ avatars to create videos in over 120 languages, I helped showcase the creative possibilities of what is possible with Synthesia. Here is a selection of my favourite campaigns.
TikTok: AI Explains AI
The world’s first TikTok AI news channel hosted by an avatar.
During my tenure, AI Explains AI (now renamed Synthesia Insider) amassed an incredible 85+ million views and over 700k followers – all with 100% original synthetic media content created by me and my team.
Check out the daily content here: tiktok.com/@synthesia_insider
Topical Creative Campaigns
The AI Advent Calendar
From Dec 1-25, 2022, I created the world’s first AI Advent Calendar as a holiday campaign for Synthesia.
It drove 4 million+ views on TikTok and inspired tens of thousands of new users to create their own personalised festive AI videos using the product.
Here’s how 🎅🏻 + 🤶🏻 + 🤖 = 🏆
🚀 Limitless Content: For 25 days we live-streamed non-stop. That’s 600 hours of broadcasting using only synthetic media. What would have taken us months to produce took my team weeks, for a fraction of the cost.
📊 Reactive Data: We could respond to live data, iterate on the best-performing content and immediately push it on-stream. We were also the first channel to use ChatGPT (released the day before launch) to create original festive stories in response to TikTok user comments.
🎨 Co-pilot Creativity: The core creative direction rested with me and my team, not AI. But we used tools like OpenAI, Midjourney, Zapier and Kaiber to be creative faster. This ranged from guided ASMR meditation sessions, to pop culture trivia, Xmas dance trends, viewer competitions, and festive craft tutorials.
📈 Catalyst Commerce: The campaign introduced Synthesia to a new global audience segment. Viewers saw the content and then made their own personalised AI Santa videos to send to their friends and family… who then did the same. This resulted in 3x the amount of user videos created through previous product campaigns.
📩 The past year has seen the pace of innovation in the AI space accelerate wildly. If you’d like to know how you can incorporate new content strategies into your business for 2024, drop me a message to find out how we can work together.
Creative Tech Case Study:
AI Sports Oracle
Sports fans love stats and tracking how their team is performing (when they’re winning). But what if they could have an AI oracle that could distill all the reams of data and predict the outcome of their team’s next match?
Meet Aida, your personal AI sports assistant. Using real-time analytics from sports exchanges, we created a personalised multi-language prediction bot that predicted the outcome of upcoming Premier League matches.
Integrating data from the Sportsmonks, Zapier Interfaces, and Synthesia’s API, myself and a creative technologist made this as an MVP to show to clients, including Arsenal F.C.
The final version of Aida would live on WhatsApp and automatically send you fun yet accurate prediction ahead of your team’s next fixture. It is designed to work for any sport and also be able to engage users with quizzes and news about their team.
Fans could also choose their favourite player to be the avatar, a celebrity, or use one of Synthesia’s avatars wearing a team kit generated by Stable Diffusion. They could also send a video to friends bragging if a win was predicted. Here’s one of the tests we made.
Creative Tech Case Study:
ChadGPT
Just as Chat GPT was released, we created @ChadGPT, a Twitter bot parody of a venture capitalist who has pivoted from Web3 to GenAI.
The goal was to jump onto the ChatGPT hype and showcase how Synthesia can automate and personalise videos on Twitter. Users could tweet him about anything and he would respond with an automated video containing wisdom on how they can use AI to address their query.
I headed up the creative direction and AI prompt engineering behind the bot.
Chad generated 500+ videos
His tweets had 240k+ impressions
Mark Cuban retweeted Chad’s content to 8.8 million followers
Chad was also followed by Marc Andreessen, Martin Varsavsky, Matt Mackowiak, Andrew Steinwold, and more influential VCs.
Avatar Debates
I produced a series of 100% AI generated debates that reached over 2m views on TikTok and provided quality long tail content for the brand’s YouTube channel.
Humanity vs AI Debate
Education vs AI Debate
AI vs The Future of Work
AI vs Pi
How can you creatively show the benefits of outsourcing repetitive manual tasks to AI?
By getting an avatar chef to count 1 million Pi digits for Pi Day!
Like all the best pies it took time to prepare. In the lead up to March 14th 2023 (3.14), we had to generate 1 million digits of Pi and use Python to transfer them to the Synthesia Studio API for the avatar to vocalise. We also created supplementary content, like #FoodTok recipes, memory games, ASMR videos and AI-generated short stories.
The livestream took 89 hours to reach 1 million digits and amassed 850k+ views. It built global brand awareness of Synthesia as a product and also highlighted how easily AI can accomplish repetitive manual jobs like counting… as well as creative culinary tasks.
Avatar Q&As
AI AMA
The goal was to show how Jack, the host of AI Explains AI, could have human-level responses to the questions and comments he received from TikTok followers.
AI Language Tutors
One of Synthesia’s most popular features is its voice and translation capabilities.
To publicise this, I created an automated YouTube channel that published 30 second Spanish tutorials based upon trending web searches. Each format took a gamified approach to help users level up their language capabilities.
To do this we used Feedly, Zapier, ChatGPT and Synthesia’s APIs to create non-stop L&D content for the Duolingo generation.
AI Explains AI History
What better way for an AI brand to show the evolution of the technology than by using a Synthesia avatar, a ChatGPT script and Midjourney images to create a timeline of AI’s key developments. To top it off, we launched it on AI pioneer Alan Turing’s birthday and also turned the audio into a podcast.
The Lookalike Livestream
Our TikTok live streams began to get flagged for being pre-recorded with synthetic media, so we created a true live broadcast format that featured a human interacting with their digital twin. This is the pilot that I developed to sell into influencers, celebrities and clients. It also showcased the BTS aspect of Synthesia’s avatar production capabilities.
All images and videos © Synthesia