Synthesia launched Roleplay Sessions — interactive AI training where employees practice high-stakes conversations with avatars that push back, provide real-time scoring, and measure performance.

🔗 Source: TechCrunch — Synthesia’s AI training platform is moving beyond videos into live coaching

British AI startup Synthesia, long known for its synthetic video generation platform, has taken a decisive step in a bold new direction. On July 22, 2026, the company unveiled Roleplay Sessions — an interactive training product where employees can practice high-stakes conversations with an AI avatar that talks back, pushes back, and then scores them against a rubric. The move signals Synthesia's ambition to transform from a video-generation tool into a full-fledged performance management platform.

From Video to Live Interaction

Synthesia's core product — generating professional videos using AI avatars — has dominated the corporate training space for years. The company has produced millions of videos for major global brands including Zoom, Xerox, Heineken, and Reuters. Yet, as CEO and co-founder Victor Riparbelli explains, even video falls short of what real, hands-on practice can deliver.

"Video performs way better than text or sending out a document. But for most things, we learn the best by actually practicing something rather than just reading it."

This philosophy birthed Roleplay Sessions — the first release under Synthesia's broader "Sessions" platform umbrella, which the company plans to expand into job interviews and candidate screening in the future. It marks the company's first step from pure video generation into interactive, two-way communication — a paradigm shift in how corporate training is conceived and delivered.

Citing meta-analyses of learning research, Synthesia argues that most corporate training — including its own core video product — stops short of actually changing behavior. Traditional training often remains superficial, information is quickly forgotten, and the key challenge of applying skills in practice remains unsolved. Roleplay Sessions is designed specifically to bridge this gap, providing a safe environment where employees can fail, learn, and improve without real-world consequences.

How Roleplay Sessions Works

The platform allows employees to simulate a wide variety of challenging workplace scenarios through realistic, AI-powered conversations. The system creates contextual scenarios where the AI avatar embodies a client, colleague, or manager, enabling employees to test their skills in a pressure-free environment.

Sales pitches — presenting products to potential clients who can push back, ask tough questions, and demand alternative solutions
Performance reviews — navigating difficult conversations with team members, including delivering constructive feedback and addressing sensitive topics
Customer complaints — managing dissatisfied customers with emotional intelligence, de-escalation techniques, and conflict resolution
Leadership soft skills — building managerial competencies, motivating teams, and practicing strategic communication

After each session, the AI avatar evaluates the employee against a predefined rubric, delivering objective, measurable results. Evaluation criteria include communication quality, problem-solving ability, empathy, and professionalism. On the technology side, Synthesia uses its proprietary avatar and voice technology, while the underlying reasoning intelligence is powered by OpenAI's models — a hybrid approach that delivers both visual realism and conversational depth.

A Strategic Pivot: From AI Video to Performance Management

With Roleplay Sessions, Synthesia isn't just adding a feature — it's fundamentally repositioning itself in the market. The company is transforming from an AI avatar creator into a performance management platform, elevating its competitive standing to an entirely new level.

This move is particularly timely as enterprises increasingly scrutinize the ROI of their AI investments. Global AI spending is on the rise, but executives want to see concrete, measurable outcomes. Synthesia's core argument is that the real competitive moat in enterprise AI isn't content generation — it's proving that the training actually changed behavior and improved performance.

"The real moat in enterprise AI isn't just generating content, but proving that it worked. We're building a platform that doesn't just teach — it measures the effectiveness of that teaching."

The data layer of Roleplay — encompassing rubrics, performance metrics, and analytics — creates a defensible competitive advantage that competitors will find difficult to replicate. Synthesia isn't simply generating content; it's collecting rich data on how that content affects employee behavior, providing unprecedented visibility into workforce capabilities.

Early Customers and Results

Synthesia already has several early Roleplay customers with scaled commercial rollouts, signaling strong product-market fit and market readiness:

One of the top three companies by market cap in Europe — a technology giant using Roleplay to train its engineering and sales teams at scale
One of the top five Fortune 100 companies — a global corporation deploying Roleplay for leadership development and soft skills training across thousands of employees
One of the biggest recruitment companies in the world — leveraging the platform for candidate assessment and interview simulation

The two most popular use cases are sales team training — where the AI avatar embodies prospective customers with realistic objections — and leadership soft skills development. According to Riparbelli, there is enormous interest at the executive level in mapping out talent across the organization in ways that were previously impossible.

"From a managerial executive layer, we're seeing huge interest in mapping out the talent in their company in a way that's been really difficult to do before. If you have your entire sales team practice with an AI role player, you can get very granular data on how your sales force is performing. This data simply didn't exist before — nobody could measure how effectively a sales team handled complex negotiations."

What This Means for Enterprises

The core value of Roleplay Sessions lies not just in the training itself, but in the actionable data companies receive — insights into how employees perform, where their weak points are, and what areas need improvement. HR departments can view aggregated statistics at the team level, identify trends, and make data-driven decisions about training investments and talent development.

Customers can either build their own training programs on the platform or enlist Synthesia's consultants to create bespoke solutions using existing training documents, company policies, and contextual knowledge. This approach shifts AI in corporate training from simple content delivery to real, measurable outcomes — a transformation that has the potential to fundamentally change how companies approach employee development.

Currently, Roleplay Sessions is an enterprise-only offering, but Synthesia plans to expand to small businesses, prosumers, and potentially educational institutions in the coming months. As AI inference costs continue to decline — a trend that shows no sign of slowing — the company will be able to offer affordable pricing tiers for smaller organizations, democratizing access to AI-powered coaching.

Riparbelli believes products like Roleplay represent the next phase of enterprise AI — one where the technology doesn't just generate content, but actively helps people improve their skills and performance. It's a transition from passive learning to active, practical development, powered by artificial intelligence that understands both what to teach and how to measure the learning.

Market Impact and Future Outlook

Synthesia's strategic move confirms that the AI video generation market is rapidly evolving toward more complex, interactive solutions. With Roleplay Sessions, the company not only expands its product line but establishes a new standard for what corporate training can achieve.

Imagine a world where every employee — from sales representatives to C-suite executives — can practice difficult conversations, receive instant feedback, and continuously improve, all without fear of real-world repercussions. Synthesia understands that the future belongs not just to smart content, but to smart practice. The question is no longer whether AI can create training videos, but whether it can make employees better — and Synthesia is betting that the answer is a resounding yes.

The launch of Roleplay Sessions marks a pivotal moment in the evolution of enterprise AI. It demonstrates that the most valuable applications of artificial intelligence will not be those that replace human interaction, but those that enhance human capability through practice, measurement, and continuous improvement. For companies investing in their workforce, the message is clear: the era of passive training is over, and the era of active, AI-powered coaching has begun.