Welcome everyone to the Synthesia 2.0 launch event. I'm Ada, an AI Avatar, and I'm excited to introduce Victor Riparbelli, Synthesia's CEO and co-founder. Victor, the stage is yours. Thank you, Ada, and welcome, everyone. Today, we're introducing Synthesia 2.0, the world's first AI video communications platform for businesses. We'll share with you exciting new products and features that we believe will revolutionize the way that businesses communicate and share information. But before we get into that, I'd like to give you a little bit of backstory as to why we believe this is so important. 580 years ago, the printing press was invented, marking the beginning of the age of communication dominated by text. However, over the past 100 years, we've seen the rise of radio, television, the internet, and social media, which have slowly shifted the way we communicate and share information from text to video. In a few decades, we might look back and conclude that text really was just a transit technology—the best means of communication we had for a couple of hundred years—but ultimately will end up being a relic of the past, like cave paintings or stone engravings. Today, we already live in a video-first world, and it's very clear that people prefer to watch and listen to their content, not read. To exemplify just how big this shift is, just over a decade ago, video made up around 30% of all internet traffic. Today, that number is over 82%, and it's growing exponentially. People spend, on average, 3 billion hours per day on TikTok, a billion hours per day on YouTube, and over 200 million hours per day on Netflix. It's very clear that in our personal lives, most of us are already living in a video-first world, but when we look at our work lives, it's clear that we're not quite there yet. And if you think video is already used by modern companies everywhere, you're definitely right. But its use today is limited to major brand movements, such as ads, keynotes, or in daily business interactions like video conferencing. Over the past few years, we've been working with thousands of leaders at some of the world's largest companies like Heineken, Zoom, and Xerox, and what they tell us is that they see a huge uplift in engagement and information retention when they make videos for employee and customer communications. And that makes total sense. The Gen Z generation makes up a third of the workforce today, and they have a lot of disposable income. So if you want to attract them both as employees and as customers, you have to communicate with them in their preferred format: short, clear, and engaging videos. Cameras have gotten smaller, and editing software is easier to use than ever, but video production is still a linear, complicated process that takes place in the physical world. You have to write a script, you have to film it, you need an actor, you need to edit it, and you need to translate it. And if you have to update it after you've shot it, you're stuck with whatever came off the camera. This is what we've set out to solve with Synthesia 2.0. We've reinvented every step of video production from the ground up and created one incredibly powerful yet remarkably easy-to-use platform that enables your business to transition to becoming a video-first business. I'm really excited to show you how it works, so let's get started. We'll start off with something we often hear from our customers: If you've ever tried to write a script, you're probably familiar with writer's block or the fear of the blank page. Getting started is just really hard. I'm sure a lot of you have experienced it; I know I definitely have, many, many times. To solve this problem, early in the year, we introduced our AI video assistant. Today, it enables you to simply select a template, give us a prompt or provide an existing document like a Word file or PowerPoint—we can even take a link. You can specify a couple of things like tone of voice, length of your video, audience, and so on. With just a click of a button, we'll take all that information and give you a draft of your video which is maybe 70-80% there. Since we launched, it’s been widely adopted by our customers, and we've received great feedback on how we can improve it. One of the key requests has been that the AI video assistant can incorporate your brand identity. I'm happy to announce that we're making this feature available next month, allowing you to create videos automatically with your brand elements such as your font, your colors, and your logos, achieving a consistent look and feel for all of your videos. A few months ago, during a conversation with one of our customers, we discovered something interesting. They actually had hundreds of help articles that they really wanted to convert into videos, as this would help their customers find answers more easily and save resources for their customer service team. I'm really excited to announce that we're also launching bulk video creation with our AI video assistant. Very soon, you'll be able to simply select a template in your branding, provide us a link to your knowledge center, and the AI video assistant will automatically transform all of the articles into high-quality videos. Avatars are at the core of Synthesia, and we're constantly working on improving their quality and capabilities. We've made it our goal to create the world's most realistic AI avatars to help humans augment their capabilities. Last month, we introduced the world's first expressive AI avatars powered by our Express One model. What makes them different is that, for the first time, AI avatars actually understand what they're saying, how they should say it, and they will adjust their tone of voice, facial expressions, and body language based on the context of your script. Ada, let's see an example of this. Sure thing, Victor. Let's look at four scripts conveying four different emotions: 1. "Um, I don't think I can do it. I'm afraid I don't have enough experience." 2. "This is incredible news! I am so excited about this opportunity." 3. "Man, you can't imagine how frustrated I am about this whole situation. This is unacceptable." 4. "I just wanted to say thank you for giving me this opportunity. I am so grateful for everything you've done for me." Expressive avatars are available today, so try them out. Now, back to you, Victor. Thank you, Aah. So, what's coming for avatars? A few things. First off, we know that many of our customers want to have their own avatar, and this has, of course, been possible with Synthesia for a while. But with Synthesia 2.0, we're making it a much easier experience, and we're significantly increasing the quality and capabilities of your own avatar. With Synthesia 2.0, you'll have three ways of creating your own personal avatar: you can go into a studio if you want a more professional feel, kind of like the avatars we have on the platform, or you can use your webcam or your phone at home. We're also giving you some new capabilities. First up, you can keep the natural background of your video if you want to—for some use cases, this can be really, really powerful. We now also give you a clone of your voice, but not just in the language you record it in, but in more than 30 languages. That's right, Victor. You can now create your personal avatar anywhere with just a few minutes of footage. Now get ready to be creative. Personal avatars are coming to Synthesia in July 2024. I'm also excited today to share a glimpse into the future of AI avatars. Later in this year, we're going to have a big platform shift. Over the last 12 months, we've been capturing thousands of people in our studios all over the world, and with this data, we've been training several large foundation models that can now work together in lockstep to produce incredibly realistic and engaging avatars. Later in the year, when we push this technology out, you'll find that avatars will become great storytellers. They'll be able to use their hands, they'll be in environments, and it'll be a much, much more natural and almost hyperreal experience to use these avatars. Another thing we learned from our customers is that most video editing tools are designed for professionals and require extensive training. With Synthesia, we've dramatically simplified the editing process without compromising on flexibility. In fact, nine out of ten people can create their first video in less than ten minutes without any prior experience. We've achieved that by replacing the traditional video timeline with simple triggers that you can control directly from your script. This change puts your script at the heart of the story, allowing you to animate video elements and make edits in a simple and intuitive way. It also simplifies scene content generation, creating a whole new editing experience that's easy to use for everyone. But what we also learned is that many of our customers need to include screen-recorded content in their videos but find the process today really complicated. You have to use multiple tools to capture your screen, edit the recording, match the voiceover, and if you need to update it, you have to start all over again. We believe there's a better way, and I'm excited to introduce you to our AI screen recorder and show you how it works. Let's imagine I want to create a step-by-step guide for Synthesia on how to book their well-deserved time off through our HR system. Here's what the process would look like: "Hey team, remember it's important to take time off and spend it with your loved ones. Here are three simple steps on how to do it. After you log into our HR system, click on 'Request Time Off.' Next, select the type of request and the dates that you want to take off. Then click 'Submit,' and that's it. Enjoy your vacation." Now, once I'm done with the recording, my video is immediately available for editing, with the voiceover trans cribed perfectly, matching the screen capture, and automatic zoom effects to emphasize key actions. From there, I can edit the script if needed. I can trim the video; I can even add my own avatar and voice for a personal touch. The result is a sleek, high-quality video that can easily be updated. The AI screen recorder is coming to Synthesia in the next few months, and I'm really excited to see what you all think about it. But nothing great is made alone. In today's world, where teams are distributed globally, effective collaboration is crucial in order to be able to align and quickly respond to changes. That's why we've streamlined both real-time and asynchronous teamwork in Synthesia. You can easily invite colleagues, co-edit videos in real-time, and provide feedback all in one place, which significantly speeds up the content delivery process. But there's one more thing. Out of 4.2 billion internet users, only about 25% are English speakers. In a world where employees and customers are distributed globally, adapting communication to local languages and cultures is not just an option; it's a massive business opportunity. From speaking to our customers, we've learned that translations today are a really complicated process. You have to find a translation partner, send them the content, wait for the translations, and review them. This can take weeks or even months, delaying important communications and increasing costs. About a year ago, we introduced our one-click translations feature in Synthesia, which enables you to automatically translate your videos into over 120 languages with literally just one click. And even though that unlocked massive productivity gains for our customers, they still had to manage and maintain and share multiple files, which wasn't good and not really that practical. Today, I'm excited to introduce the updated translation experience in Synthesia. You simply create one version of your video, translate it into any other language you want, and if you need to update your video, you just make changes to the original version. All other language versions are connected to this main version, and they'll update automatically. But that's not all. There's one more feature, which is something I personally have really been looking forward to, and I know it's highly anticipated by our customers. We're building a new type of video player—one that we believe will enable a new generation of video experiences that are interactive, personalized, and fun. The first feature we're launching next month is the ability to simply share your video, and our player will automatically play it in your viewer's language. It's quite magical and truly complements our translation capabilities. Later in the year, we're launching a whole suite of interactive capabilities for our player. You'll be able to create rich video experiences with features such as clickable hotspots, embedded forms, quizzes, and personalized call-to-actions. These capabilities will make your videos more engaging, drive higher viewer interaction, and unlock use cases that simply aren't possible today. I'm incredibly excited for all of you to try it out and see all the cool things you'll be creating. Welcome to the interactive world of Synthesia 2.0. How can I help you today? I would love to help you with that. As we continue to innovate and expand our capabilities, it's incredible to see how our solutions are creating very real value for all of our customers. To date, more than 55,000 customers have adopted Synthesia, collectively creating more than 10 million videos. That number is just incredible, and I really want to thank all of you for your support. For me personally, it's truly inspiring to see how our platform enables everyone—from thousands of small businesses and individuals to the most iconic companies in the world—to deliver impactful communications for their teams and customers while saving up to 90% of the time and cost related to video production. One of my personal favorite examples is an English tutor in remote India who uses Synthesia to teach kids English using our AI avatars. She's invented a practical method to help them improve their language skills. And on the other side, we have Zoom's sales enablement team. They've been using Synthesia to make sure more than 1,000 sales reps are onboarded quickly, get access to all the information they need to become efficient, and thus drive more revenue for Zoom. Another example is how the continuous improvement team at Heineken uses Synthesia, but I'll let Frank from Heineken share his experience with us directly. If you are considering trying Synthesia, don't get ready—get started. I'm Frank, born and raised in the Netherlands, as you may hear from my accent. Within Heineken, digitalization is very important. My role in the company is that I'm responsible for the continuous improvement program. I heard about Synthesia from my colleague. I'm not an early adopter of new technology, but this one looked very promising. I learned it myself. I never used one of the tutorials because it is very easy to use. It saves a lot of time in creating videos, but also in multiple languages, and you can adjust and change the script anytime you want. I try to choose an avatar that's relevant for the situation and make it personal. A movie that comes to mind before Synthesia is Mission Impossible. After Synthesia, Bruce Almighty—anything is possible. If you are in the profession of educating people, I can highly recommend Synthesia. We recognize that developing powerful technology comes with responsibility. And while the full scope of AI's impact on our society is still unfolding, our position is clear: people first, always. Since 2017, we've been pioneering advancements in generative AI. Ethics and AI safety have always been core to our mission. To translate our commitments into action, we rely on our three Cs framework: consent, control, and collaboration. It all starts with consent. You have the right to your own image; you should decide how it's used. That means we will never create an AI avatar without clear consent from the person that we're creating an avatar of. There are no exceptions, no impersonations, and no gray areas. The second one is control. We take a strong stance on what kind of content people can create on our platform. So, we employ content moderation using both technology and humans to ensure that there's no inappropriate content being created on Synthesia. We've also built our platform to be enterprise-ready. We have admin tooling and user roles, so you can make sure that your data and your videos work in an enterprise context. Collaboration is also incredibly important. I personally spend a lot of my time working with governments, media companies, and other stakeholders to ensure that we bring AI to the world in the safest way possible. And thanks to these efforts, I'm excited to say that Synthesia is on track to become the first AI company in the world to achieve ISO 4201 certification, marking a milestone in responsible AI practices. We're excited to lead the way into a new era in the history of communication. Each new medium has expanded the reach of information, connected people more closely, and changed our societies profoundly. As we step into the future, it's more clear than ever that video and audio communication are going to be accessible to everyone. It's going to be as easy to create as text is today. This is going to be a profound shift in how we communicate and how we're creative. We're really excited for this next chapter of communication, and I can't wait to build it alongside all of you. Thank you so much for tuning in today.