Experimenting with AI Avatars in 2025

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Ross Stevenson
May 13th, 2025

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 TODAY’S THOUGHTS ☠️

Hey there 👋,

And we’re back…that week was too quick.

It felt like a lot happened though.

From every CEO “leaking” an email on social about their company being AI-first, to me considering goose farming as a legit new career choice 😱.

The latter, of course, is particularly affected by the incredible amount of pollen that surrounds my house, putting me into a hayfever-induced coma. I was certainly cognitively compromised — aka brain fried.

That didn’t stop me from finding much humour in the latest CEO AI-first email trend.

It almost takes me back to the school playground days, where kids would proclaim they had just got into Pokémon (never got that Charizard card, btw) or had jumped on the next craze of marbles, yo-yos or Tamagotchis.

Everyone wanted in on the ‘thing’.

Alas, it’s a funny old world, isn’t it? (Maybe I’m still hayfever drunk.)

Today won’t be about how to get your Tamagotchi to survive more than 3 days (soz).

Instead, I’m back with another AI in L&D experiment.

This time, I’m revisiting AI avatars to see how this tech has progressed with a step by step breakdown of an avatar-focused project I built.

Get your tea or beverage of choice ready, 🍵.

We've got lots to discuss!

P.S. Your app might clip this edition due to size, if so, read the full edition in all its glory in your browser.

 IN THIS DROP 📔

  • Checking back in with AI avatar tech in 2025

  • Why AI can’t improve learning at work on its own

  • The tech features changing the world that L&D is sleeping on

TOGETHER WITH SANA

You’ve heard me talk a lot about the power of AI tutors as the next evolution of L&D.

The future of learning isn't about AI replacing humans—it's about strengthening the L&D function.

The smart folks at Sana know this well, and that’s why I’m very excited about their AI tutor.

This isn't a replacement for L&D.

Instead, it handles repetitive tasks so you can focus on what humans do best: strategic thinking, creative problem-solving, and building meaningful learning experiences.

Who doesn’t want that?

Sana’s AI tutor:

- Adapts to individual goals and needs

- Understands both world knowledge and your company's expertise

- Provides just-in-time answers when learners need them most

- Helps practice skills and act on feedback

It makes learning conversational instead of transactional.

This is the future, are you in?

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 THE BIG THOUGHT 👀

What Can You Do With AI Avatars in 2025?

Surprised Oh My GIF

My latest experiments with AI to rewire learning have taken me back to playing with AI Avatars.

The market has many AI avatar tools with varying degrees of quality (I have seen some horror shows). I’ve played around with a few but never really found a good use case for them.

The quality level has mostly put me off sharing anything built with them, but times change, and the tech has advanced…a lot.

In L&D, I’ve often seen Avatars used as a way to elevate bad practices.

Too many turn that already crap course/powerpoint/pdf into a droning avatar and think that’s ‘job done’. In reality, its just crap in → crap out, and that’s not the fault of the tech - its ours.

We’re falling to the limits of our ideas.

Faster and more might feel like the only option on the table with AI avatars, but that’s not the case.

We have to rewire how we do what we do.

Converting an ‘average’ static piece of content into something AI-enhanced is probably not your best call.

Grand Theft Avatars

I must admit, watching several deepfake-themed thrillers like the superb British drama The Capture has put me in a constant state of suspicion when it comes to using my likeness with any of these tools.

Sadly, this choice has been taken away from me in the last few months, as I’ve dealt with continued instances of my video content being stolen, translated into different languages, and reused across social platforms.

Yes, they even target little old me.

Apparently, I’m a small hit with Japanese audiences.

Those reservations aside, I always believe every tool has a time and place.

Stand-alone vs built-in

While I like stand-alone AI tools, having everything in one place for video editing is an advantage.

So, when I saw Descript, a video editing tool I use daily, introduce their v1 of AI avatars to their platform, I decided to jump back in and see where the tech is at today.

Let me clarify something here: I’m aware that better AI avatar tools exist, but I’m not looking to use several different apps chained together.

If I get a lot of value out of an existing product and they bring AI features that work well within that product, I’m all for that.

The ability to do everything I need with existing features I’m comfortable with, and have that additional AI layer in-app, is what gets more of my attention these days.

Plus, I don’t have all the money in the world for a bazillion app subscriptions.

As the feature is a v1, I’m not expecting the level of something like HeyGen or Synthesia.

I’d give my experience and the result a 7/10 — and there’s nothing wrong with a 7/10 in my book.

Here’s what I liked:

  • The lip-sync looks pretty damn good

  • Body and face movements didn’t feel distracting

  • The ease of writing my script and the transcription quality

  • How effortlessly the avatar worked with existing features — I did expect breaks, but had none

What could be better:

  • Avatar selection: currently, you can only pick from animated, otherworldly or digital-type characters. It’s a v1, so this is fine, and I didn’t want to provide my own avatar

  • Avatar visual quality: You can probably see this in the video. Although the video is output in 4K, the avatar looks pixelated at times

  • Over-exaggeration of words: I see this in a lot of these avatars, and you’ll see it in the video too. The pitch when pronouncing some words can be off.

In sum: I’m not assessing this as an AI avatar feature on its own. That 7/10 rating takes into account how it complements the existing product and the ease of use for me as a daily user.

→ What do you think? Check out the finished video and hit ‘reply’ to let me know.

Oh, I nearly forgot — I need to tell you about the use case.

The problem I’m solving

I binge (with AI) a lot of reports.

A lot of the time, I don’t want to keep writing another article or shoot another talking head video about new research, even if I’ve found it valuable.

A new report from Microsoft, covering how they think teams will evolve with AI, fell into this category.

It’s a great report, and I will write in more detail about it, but I wanted to get some initial thoughts out there, which I think you (yes, gentle reader — you) could benefit from, until I drink copious amounts of tea to distil those thoughts.

So that scenario, and Descript launching this feature, collided, and here we are.

I spent 15 minutes skim-reading the report (yes, I still do that), jotting down the key insights and ideas that stood out for me in my little notebook (and yes, I still do that too), before I spoke to my good AI friend in NotebookLM.

That chat involved NLM reviewing the report with my notes and crafting a narrative together on what I felt was most useful to share. This became the script for the video, which I tweaked a lot in the editing phase. I felt it needed more of my infused sarcastic British tone.

All the transitions and media in the video were done within Descript’s editor.

3 hours later, you have the below.

I feel like it turned out ok.

So, will I be using these all the time? No.

But will I be more open to experimentation with Avatars depending on the context of my goals? 100%.

Bonus: How I created this video in Descript (step by step tutorial)

I imagine you might want to know how the above was created.

Fret not, I filmed a second video to show you how I used Descript to build the end-to-end production, including the avatar creation and editing.

Don’t say I never treat you!

AI avatar tools to test

I always stick to the best tool being one that best fits your goals and priorities.

For me, Descript ticks this box right now as I already pay for the core product, but that doesn’t mean it’ll be right for you.

Other avatar focused platforms include:

  • HeyGen

  • Synthesia

  • Elai

  • Coloyssan

If you’re already a power user of these, let me know how you use them.

How do you access AI-Powered features?

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Final thoughts

There are 3 points to take away today:

  1. Think about how you’re rewiring how we craft learning experiences with AI - don’t do what you’ve always done (death to PDFs and PowerPoint)

  2. Getting quality features in a product you love using already can be more powerful than using several different tools combined. This is contextual, though

  3. The best way to ‘figure out’ how useful AI could be, is to use AI

→ If you’ve found this helpful, please consider sharing it wherever you hang out online, tag me in and share your thoughts.

Till next time, you stay classy, learning friend!

PS… If you’re enjoying the newsletter, will you take 4 seconds to forward this edition to a friend? It goes a long way in helping me grow the newsletter (and cut through our industry BS with actionable insights).

And one more thing, I’d love your input on how to make the newsletter even more useful for you!

So please leave a comment with:

  1. Ideas you’d like covered in future editions

  2. Your biggest takeaway from this edition

I read & reply to every single one of them!

 👀 ICYMI (In case you missed it!)

  1. AI won't improve learning on its own, its success depends on you.

    Just one of the messages I liked in this paper on “Understanding the effects of AI on Learning”

  2. A behind the scenes look at how I use AI coaches in my online courses. I’ve talked a lot about this recently, and this is a real working example.

  3. My friends at Offbeat only have 10 places left for their learning festival hitting London this June, and they’ve kindly given STT readers an exclusive 10% off with code: ROSS10 - be quick, time is ticking

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 VIDEO THOUGHTS 💾

This Is Going To Change Everything About Performance Support at Work

I feel like a lot of L&D teams are sleeping on how powerful some AI tools have become with vision and voice capabilities.

When AI can see you, your screen and hear you - everything we know about ‘in the flow’ support is reshaped.

This is why we need a complete rethinking of how learning is designed, delivered, and measured in the workplace.

In this video, I unpack the power of live streaming AI assistants and what that could mean for how we do things today.

→ Stay tuned till the end to see a demo of the tools doing just this, and real-world examples.

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