Practicing a difficult conversation with an avatar that pushes back

Synthesia’s Roleplay Sessions allow employees to practice facing an avatar that challenges their arguments. A tool to automate coaching.

Most corporate training programs know how to inform and demonstrate, but rarely how to enable practice at scale: managers lack time, and the quality of coaching varies. This is the angle of Roleplay Sessions, which Synthesia is positioning as the first product of a future Sessions platform. Employees practice a difficult conversation with an interactive avatar that dialogues and knows how to object, as often as they want, and then receive AI coaching.

The product connects four steps within a single tool. Information is delivered through generated video, which is already Synthesia's core business. Practice takes place through role-playing scenarios where target skills and situations are defined, initially in English, German, Spanish, and French. Coaching is based on a specific approach: before displaying a score, the AI asks learners to reflect on their performance, then engages in a dialogue with them rather than just delivering a verdict, with each session evaluated according to a role-specific rubric. Finally, measurement is fed back into a dashboard that shows managers which skills are actually correlated with performance—often not the ones expected.

The entire system connects to existing HR systems and learning management platforms. Synthesia highlights early pilots, including an average skill increase of about 30% at a recruitment firm and nearly 70% of users returning to practice on their own, figures that the company itself reports. The tool is launching for sales enablement, management training, and customer support, with the ability to create custom role-play scenarios.