Synthesia, the British startup known for using AI to produce corporate training videos quickly and cheaply, announced Roleplay Sessions on Wednesday. The new product lets employees rehearse high-stakes conversations — such as sales pitches, performance reviews, and customer complaints — with an AI avatar that responds, pushes back, and then scores the interaction against a predefined rubric.
Roleplay is the first release within a broader "Sessions" platform that Synthesia plans to expand into other formats, including job interviews and candidate screening, the company told TechCrunch.
Why the shift matters
Until now, Synthesia emphasized rapid, cost-effective video generation for enterprise training. With Roleplay, the company is wagering that the competitive advantage in enterprise AI lies not only in generating content but in proving that training actually changes behavior. Citing a meta-analysis of learning research, Synthesia argues most corporate training informs or demonstrates but stops short of producing behavior change — and that practicing with feedback is what creates real learning.
Strategic repositioning toward measurable outcomes
Although Synthesia’s avatar and voice technologies are proprietary, the startup relies on OpenAI for the underlying reasoning intelligence. By adding rubrics, performance metrics and analytics, Synthesia is positioning Roleplay more as a performance-management platform with a video front end than merely an avatar provider.
"Video performs way better than text or sending out a document," Victor Riparbelli, Synthesia’s CEO and co-founder, told TechCrunch. "But for most things, we learn the best by actually practicing something rather than just reading it."
Riparbelli also said executives are increasingly interested in mapping talent across their organizations in ways that were previously difficult. If an entire sales team practices with an AI role player, he argued, employers can collect granular data on overall salesforce performance.
Early customers and common use cases
A company spokesperson said Synthesia already has several early Roleplay customers with scaled commercial rollouts, including "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 common uses are training sales teams and leadership — largely soft-skills programs such as practicing product pitches or navigating difficult conversations.
As with its main product, customers can build their own training programs on the platform or hire Synthesia’s consultants to develop bespoke solutions that leverage the company’s existing training documents and context.
Roadmap and availability
Roleplay is an enterprise-focused offering for now, but Synthesia intends to broaden availability to small businesses, prosumers and possibly educational institutions over the next few months as inference costs decline. Riparbelli says products like Roleplay represent the next phase of enterprise AI adoption, in which companies prioritize measurable business outcomes over demo-friendly appearances.
Summary
With Roleplay Sessions, Synthesia is shifting from primarily producing training videos toward delivering interactive, practice-based learning that includes feedback and analytics — a move aimed at proving and improving real-world performance.
