TechCrunch embeds Synthesia-built interactive avatar of its reporter in an article
alexvoica · x · 2026-09-28
Synthesia partnered with TechCrunch to embed what's billed as the world's first interactive avatar of a journalist, built for reporter Dominic-Madori Davis's story on VC-funded startups engaged in fraud. Readers can question the avatar directly in the article.
Key constraints:
- The avatar only answers from a fixed knowledge base (two academic papers plus the reporter's article), lightly rephrasing material for clarity but never going beyond it
- When information isn't in its knowledge base, it says it doesn't know rather than guessing or hallucinating
The author sees this as opening new ways for readers to interact with both a story and its writer.
More from Apps
- Doubao Brings Free Chinese-English Voice Input to Windows — lxfater · 2026-09-29
- AI-powered project to subtitle 40 years of Chile's Al Sur del Mundo documentary archive — capetorch · 2026-09-29
- invideo launches agentic video editor that edits a real multitrack timeline — azed_ai · 2026-09-29
- Barracuda launches AI Data Security with controls for 1,300+ AI tools, free in SecureEdge — shashib · 2026-09-29
- NOOP frees WHOOP from subscriptions: local Bluetooth, your health data stays on-device — mhdfaran · 2026-09-29
- World's first live AI-assisted brain surgery removes tumour using real-time DINOv3 inference — TimDarcet · 2026-09-29