TechCrunch journalist Dominic-Madori Davis created an interactive digital avatar of herself with Synthesia, trained to answer questions about one of her articles. The experiment demonstrates how AI avatars could be used in communications, journalism, training and customer-facing roles, while also raising questions about consent, authenticity and the increasingly human-like use of AI in public relations.

To create the avatar, Davis gave consent, had photographs taken and recorded two minutes of speech in Synthesia’s office studio. The system combines voice-to-text, language, text-to-voice and video-animation models; Synthesia provides its own models but also lets customers use alternatives from companies including Cartesia, ElevenLabs, Google and OpenAI. The company, founded in the UK, was valued at $4 billion earlier in 2026 and reported more than $100 million in annual recurring revenue the previous year.