Our new synthetic reality: What it means for media and business communication

A new reality on the rise

The rapid rise of AI, especially generative AI (GenAI), has sped up synthetic reality’s growth and adoption. In the past year alone we’ve seen a torrent of new academic research, tools, startups and even established tech giants demonstrate capabilities in this emerging space. VASA-1, an AI model from Microsoft, produces “lifelike audio-driven talking faces generated in real time” with nothing more than a single static image and an audio clip. Nvidia-backed Synthesia creates expressive avatars that can learn facial expressions and body movement in relation to spoken content and sentiment.

What once seemed futuristic is now becoming mainstream — and as AI and GenAI become intrinsic to business operations, they can enable even more sophisticated and accessible tools for creating synthetic reality media and experiences. This rapid evolution, however, also means that our ability to keep up with ethical standards, security measures and verification processes is bound to be constantly tested. The same technology that enables innovative customer interactions can also lead to misinformation and trust issues.

But while enterprises should proceed with diligence to implement these technologies responsibly, they shouldn’t delay adoption. The ability to create personalized, multilingual interactions at scale with uncanny accuracy can significantly enhance customer experience, expand market reach and improve operations.

Synthetic reality’s now part of our new business reality, and it’s here to stay.

What can I do with synthetic reality?

People don’t scale, but technology does. Synthetic reality uproots our previously conceived ideas of what an enterprise can accomplish while still maintaining one-to-one human connections.

Synthetic reality solutions have the ability to create tailored, audience-specific content in a more cost and time-efficient manner without compromising quality. Using nothing more than a text input, avatars can say anything in almost any language, use different accents or emulate our speech patterns and inflections. They can express human-like emotions, answer questions and engage in live streaming discussions thanks to GenAI large language models and natural language processing.

No special software or systems are needed to experience these avatars, allowing organizations to level up their communications with unprecedented efficiency, speed and scale. For amplified effect, these avatars can also be placed in virtual or augmented environments requiring more specific software or systems or devices.

Here are some of the many potential use cases for synthetic reality.

• Cybersecurity: Synthetic reality can create realistic cybersecurity threat scenarios for training like creating simulated scenarios in audio or video clips, allowing IT professionals to practice response strategies in a controlled environment. Interactive modules that use synthetic video avatar or audio scenarios can also train your employees to recognize and respond to phishing attempts, improving your organization’s overall security posture.
• Customer service: AI-generated customer service avatars can enable continuous support and immediate response to inquiries, enhancing customer satisfaction and operational efficiency. Streaming synthetic reality avatars, powered by GenAI large language models, can replace the text chatbots commonly used in customer service today. They can work 24/7 without any breaks, guaranteeing immediate responses to inquiries while freeing up your staff to manage more strategic, higher value tasks.
• Content creation: Synthetic reality avatars can deliver personalized marketing messages, host virtual events and engage with customers in real-time, helping to create a seamless brand experience.
• Localized and multilingual communication: Avatars can communicate in multiple languages to reach a broader, global audience without barriers. At the same time, they can provide localized customer support and marketing, reducing the need for extensive multilingual staff.
• Employee training and onboarding: Avatars offer a scalable solution for educating your new hires. They can simulate real-life scenarios and offer instant feedback.
• Internal communications: LLM-powered avatars can host internal meetings, engage in Q&A and deliver company updates, reducing the need for repetitive presentations by senior leaders (especially in large organizations with distributed teams).
• Market research and focus groups: Avatars can conduct virtual focus groups and surveys, gathering valuable customer insights and feedback while maintaining greater consistency in data collection.

Verify, then trust

When anyone with an internet connection and some software can create convincingly realistic media, trust becomes both precious and precarious. You should take the following steps to help enable the verification needed to earn stakeholder and customer trust.

• Establish clear use policies and guidelines for the acceptable uses of synthetic media within your organization and the standards that should be maintained. For example, individuals should grant their consent before allowing their likeness to be generated as an avatar.
• Employ digital watermarks or similar techniques to embed identifiers within digital media so that the origin and authenticity can be verified.
• Develop and integrate systems that use AI and other technologies to automatically verify the authenticity of digital content before it’s published or disseminated.
• Work with external verification services to validate the authenticity of synthetic media, adding an additional layer of trust for stakeholders and customers.
• Conduct training and awareness programs to help your employees, customers and other stakeholders recognize and understand the implications of synthetic media.
• Define and incorporate synthetic media-centric scenarios into your traditional incident response tabletop exercises.
• Interact with the technology and experiment. To fully grasp this technology's impact on your business, explore its potential — no technical skills needed.

Keeping humanity front and center

Responsible approaches and practices are critical to successful synthetic reality execution and adoption. Embracing this technology can be crucial for maintaining trust and leveraging its full potential.

Synthetic reality is not about machines replacing humans. It’s about humans using technology to help improve our work and grow our relationships. It’s about achieving emotional as well as enterprise scale, freeing ourselves to make greater use of our time and energy.

By placing human values at the core of technological development, we can create a future where synthetic reality strengthens our trust in digital interactions and with each other.