For years, Synthesia's core proposition revolved around leveraging AI to empower enterprises to create interactive training videos efficiently, in mere minutes, and at a fraction of the traditional cost associated with developing corporate educational content. However, the startup's newest product signals a strategic pivot, positing that the true competitive advantage in enterprise AI lies not merely in generating content, but crucially, in unequivocally demonstrating its effectiveness and impact.
This past Wednesday, the British startup introduced Roleplay Sessions, an innovative interactive training product. It enables employees to practice high-stakes conversations — such as sales pitches, performance reviews, and customer complaint resolution — with an AI avatar that not only responds and challenges them but also objectively scores their performance against a predetermined rubric.
Roleplay marks the initial release under a broader "Sessions" platform, which Synthesia plans to expand into diverse formats, including job interviews and candidate screening, as exclusively learned by TechCrunch.
The timing of this launch is particularly pertinent as enterprises are increasingly scrutinizing the return on investment of their AI expenditures. Citing a meta-analysis of learning research, Synthesia argues that the majority of corporate training — implicitly including its own foundational video product — often falls short of instigating actual behavioral change. While these trainings effectively inform and demonstrate, true learning and skill mastery are fundamentally driven by active practice combined with constructive feedback.
“Video performs way better than text or sending out a document,” Synthesia CEO and co-founder Victor Riparbelli told TechCrunch. “But for most things, we learn the best by actually practicing something rather than just reading it.”
Roleplay also strategically positions Synthesia in a more defensible market space. While the company's avatar and voice technologies are proprietary, the underlying reasoning intelligence is powered by OpenAI. By integrating a comprehensive layer that includes rubrics, performance data, and analytics, Synthesia is redefining itself less as an AI avatar company and more as a sophisticated performance-management platform, distinguished by its intuitive video front end.
“From a managerial executive layer, we’re seeing huge interest in mapping out the talent in their company in a way that’s been really difficult to do before,” Riparbelli said. He added, “If you have your entire sales team practice with an AI role player, you can get very granular data on how your sales force is doing overall.”
Synthesia already boasts several early Roleplay customers who are implementing scaled commercial rollouts. These include, according to a company spokesperson, "one of the top three companies by market cap in Europe, one of the top five Fortune 100, and one of the biggest recruitment companies in the world."
The two most popular applications involve training sales teams and leadership development, encompassing programs like practicing product sales techniques or navigating challenging conversations. Riparbelli highlighted that a significant portion of this training focuses on enhancing crucial soft skills.
As with Synthesia’s primary product, customers retain the flexibility to either design their own training programs directly on the platform or engage Synthesia’s consultants to develop a bespoke solution, which can partially leverage the company’s existing training documents and contextual information.
While Roleplay is currently offered as an enterprise solution, the long-term objective is to broaden its availability to small businesses, prosumers, and potentially educational institutions within the next few months, driven by the continuous decline in inference costs. Riparbelli firmly believes that products like Roleplay represent the next evolutionary phase of enterprise AI adoption, where companies will prioritize measurable business outcomes over superficial appeal in social media demonstrations.
The Editorial Staff at AIChief is a team of professional content writers with extensive experience in AI and marketing. Founded in 2025, AIChief has quickly grown into the largest free AI resource hub in the industry.