Synthesia launches AI roleplay training for workplace conversations

Synthesia has launched AI Roleplay Sessions, an enterprise training product that lets employees practice workplace conversations with AI avatars that deliver feedback, scoring and analytics. The move pushes the company beyond generating corporate videos and into a more sensitive role: measuring how people perform in live training, where the promise is faster coaching but the risk is more surveillance and less human judgment.

The London-based company has already framed that shift on its own site. Its Video Agents feature is described as a way to “build skills with interactive AI role play” and as “a safe place to practice conversations and improve performance,” with use cases in sales enablement, customer support and onboarding. Synthesia also says its sales-enablement material is built around measurable results, citing a gap in corporate execution: 89% of sales teams have a documented process, but only 36% of reps consistently follow it.

That focus on practice, rather than static content, fits the company’s broader pitch to large employers. Synthesia says its products are trusted by 90% of Fortune 100 companies, that it serves more than 1 million users, and that it offers 230-plus avatars in 140-plus languages. Those figures underscore how aggressively the company is moving to position itself as enterprise infrastructure, not just a video tool.

The new training push comes after Synthesia raised $200 million in Series E funding at a $4 billion valuation. The company said the money would help it change how companies train and upskill their workforce. Founded in 2017 by Victor Riparbelli and Steffen Tjerrild, Synthesia has steadily expanded from AI-generated video into more interactive workflows, including a Live Collaboration launch in 2024 and a broader roadmap Riparbelli has pointed to for 2025 and 2026.

Riparbelli has long argued for enterprise use cases. A 2024 StrictlyVC London discussion centered on AI-generated video for business, and the company’s latest products show that the same logic is now being applied to coaching conversations, not just producing them. The category is getting crowded fast, with competitors and adjacent tools including Retorio, Hyperbound, Second Nature, Virtual Sapiens, ELB Learning’s Rehearsal Roleplay and Paradiso Solutions all selling versions of AI roleplay or coaching for sales and workplace communication.