Synthesia Expands Beyond AI Video Generation With Interactive Training Platform To Measure Employee Performance

British artificial intelligence startup Synthesia is expanding beyond AI-generated corporate videos with the launch of an interactive training platform designed to help enterprises measure whether employees actually improve their skills, marking a shift toward performance management.

The company on Wednesday unveiled Roleplay Sessions, an AI-powered training product that allows employees to simulate real-world workplace conversations with AI avatars that can respond dynamically, challenge users, and assess their performance against predefined evaluation criteria.

The launch represents Synthesia's first product under a broader Sessions platform that the company plans to expand into additional enterprise applications, including job interviews and candidate screening, according to TechCrunch.

The move follows a broader shift in the enterprise AI market, where customers are now demanding measurable returns on their AI investments rather than simply adopting generative AI tools for productivity gains.

Synthesia built its business by enabling companies to produce training videos using AI-generated avatars, dramatically reducing the cost and time required to create corporate learning materials.

However, Chief Executive and co-founder Victor Riparbelli said the company believes that generating training content alone is insufficient if businesses cannot determine whether employees have actually learned new skills.

"Video performs way better than text or sending out a document," Riparbelli told TechCrunch. "But for most things, we learn the best by actually practicing something rather than just reading it."

The company cited research suggesting that while instructional videos improve knowledge transfer, behavioral change is more effectively achieved through repeated practice combined with immediate feedback.

Roleplay Sessions is designed around that principle by allowing employees to engage in simulated conversations covering scenarios such as sales presentations, customer complaints, performance reviews, and difficult workplace discussions. Rather than simply watching instructional content, users receive real-time responses from AI avatars before being evaluated against company-defined rubrics.

The new offering also represents a repositioning for Synthesia as generative AI technologies become increasingly commoditized. While the company continues to rely on its proprietary avatar and voice-generation technologies, the reasoning capabilities underpinning the conversations are powered by OpenAI's large language models.

By layering enterprise-specific assessment tools, analytics, and performance scoring on top of foundation models, Synthesia is attempting to differentiate itself from companies offering generic AI assistants.

"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.

"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."

Vendors in enterprise software are increasingly seeking to build proprietary workflows and datasets around third-party AI models instead of competing solely on model capabilities.

Synthesia said several large organizations have already begun deploying the platform commercially. According to the company, early customers include one of Europe's three largest publicly listed companies by market capitalization, one of the five largest Fortune 100 companies and one of the world's largest recruitment firms.

The most common applications involve sales enablement and leadership development, where employees can repeatedly practice customer interactions, negotiations and management conversations before engaging with clients or colleagues. Organizations can either build their own roleplay scenarios using existing company documentation and training materials or work with Synthesia's consulting team to develop customized training programs tailored to their business needs.

The launch comes as businesses increasingly scrutinize enterprise AI spending following an initial wave of enthusiasm surrounding generative AI. After two years of rapid experimentation with AI assistants and content-generation tools, many corporate technology leaders are shifting their attention toward measurable business outcomes, productivity gains and workforce performance.

This evolution is reshaping enterprise AI priorities. Rather than evaluating AI based on its ability to generate text, images or videos, organizations are now seeking platforms that can demonstrate improvements in employee productivity, sales effectiveness and operational performance.

For AI vendors, this creates an opportunity to move beyond offering standalone generative AI features and instead become integrated into broader enterprise workflows.

Although Roleplay Sessions is initially targeted at large enterprise customers, Synthesia plans to expand the platform to smaller businesses, individual professionals and educational institutions over the coming months as AI inference costs continue to decline. The company expects the broader Sessions platform to evolve beyond employee training into areas such as recruitment, candidate assessment and other interactive business workflows that combine conversational AI with structured performance evaluation.