So my final take is that in using AI avatars in your videos,

you really need to know your audience and know your purpose of your video. So

if you are creating a video that is long,

instructional screen based, it's okay to have some flexibility to try

and add an AI avatar. But if you're creating a personal

or sensitive or small team recording, just an update,

it's not appropriate to replace a human presenter with AI avatars. So make sure that

you know your audience, know your message and act appropriately in your

videos. Good morning, good evening, good

afternoon, wherever you are and wherever you're watching. My name is Matt Pierce, Sosa Visual

Lounge and we are back with more AI research. That's right. If you

listen to or watch the last episode, we talked about AI voices,

AI voice generation and some of the impact there, some what people thought about

them, how it can affect learning. Today we're going the next step further. We're going

to be talking about AI avatars. So you might be on the fence here. You

might be like, I don't know, I don't know about AI avatars. You might be

on the side of you love them because they make your work faster and easier

and you can produce more content. Or you might be on the other side where

you're like, no way, I will never use an AI avatar. I don't like them.

Whatever it might be, there is information here that you might find valuable

based on research. So let's go ahead and jump back in and introduce our

guest today, Stephanie Warnhoff. She's a market researcher for

TechSmith and she has done this great research study. So Stephanie, Stephanie,

welcome back to the Visual Lounge. Oh, thank you. Thank you very much.

Good afternoon, Matt. Yeah, good afternoon. Well, we're going to dive in because there's

so much here I think that's worth covering and I think this is so

everyone for context, this is part of our AI research. We'll post the link in

the context below so you can find that blog post in the PDF. So

Stephanie, as you started going part through this research and you started learning from what

people were saying, particularly with AI avatars, we what surprised you

most in particular about what you found. So

we ran basically the same, similar type of study. We

had five different videos that we showed each

individual participant. One. So one was using a human

avatar in picture, in picture, so small circle kind of taking up, you

know, a quarter of the screen. Then we had the human full screen which was

more like half and half. Then we had an AI avatar that was also

picture in Picture an AI avatar that was full screen, which is about half the

screen. And then we had an audio visualizer, which is a

feature that you can include in your Camtasia videos. But it is basically a still

image with a bubble around it, for lack

of a better word, that shows kind of the waveforms when someone is speaking. So

it's not a moving video, but it is movement and engaging for your

eyes. So we had those five videos and I think the thing that

surprised me the most was that on the AI avatar side

that participants felt like the smaller picture in picture avatar was

actually higher quality than the full screen AI avatar. I think

I was thinking, okay, bigger is better. So the bigger the avatar is,

the bigger the human is, the higher quality they're going to think it is. And

that was just not correct. It was not correct in terms of what they

felt like for high quality. And it wasn't, it wasn't

the biggest. When we talk about learning retention, which we'll get to later on,

but 31% more participants felt that the smaller AI

avatar was either good or excellent quality versus that full screen

AI avatar. And we did have an open ended comment section there as well that

let us know that basically with that larger on screen avatar, the tiny

motions that make AI avatars look, I mean, kind of fake

were more noticeable. So like the facial expressions, the kind of

imperfect eye contact, kind of robotic sounding voice was more

noticeable because that avatar was taking up more of the screen real estate

on the screen. So although it's the most surprising thing,

once I looked at the data and read through those comments, I could completely understand

why people focused on felt that way. Yeah, well, we actually

have the, the snippets of those. I think we're gonna. Let's play those now

since you've described them so we can see them now. If you're a podcast listener,

you can't see obviously through the podcast. I recommend you go check out our YouTube

channel or on the Visual Lounge. We've been starting to post the videos from YouTube

so you can check it out there. Anything we should know before we watch this

beside beyond what you've already said, Stephanie? I don't think so.

But just remember that each participant only saw one of these videos. This is kind

of a montage of all five smashed together. So you'll notice kind of the cuts

of, you know, or so seconds. It'll flip to another one. So this is not

exactly what they saw, but it's one part of what they saw. We

get the benefit of seeing all of them. But yeah, participants only saw a month,

so. Well, let's go ahead and watch that. Google search results can be

a bit much sometimes. A simple search like what is the best

sunscreen? Is full of ads and profit driven biases.

Google search results can be a bit much sometimes. A simple search like

what is the best sunscreen? Is full of ads and profit driven

biases. Google search results can be a bit much sometimes.

A simple search like what is the best sunscreen? Is full of ads and

profit driven biases. Google search results can be a bit

much. A simple question like what is the best sunscreen? Is

full of ads and profit driven biases. Google search results can

be a bit much. A simple question like what is the best

sunscreen? Is full of ads and profit driven biases.

Okay, so we've got a few, few different options there. Obviously there's a

human in there. There's the audio

visualizer with the rings around it of a still image. Got lots to look

at. Now one thing, Stephanie, you've worked on some of our other research projects

as well. And in past research we've seen like, you know,

most people prefer a real human over some type of

AI avatar. Yet when we actually did this test, you know,

this experiment here, this research, it looks like learners actually

rated AI avatars equally or as

equal professional kind of level as those as the humans.

So one thing that stands out to me is that I think it was like

92% of viewers rated avatar videos as professional

and they would watch another video from that creator.

What's the explanation between kind of that gap of what we've seen in past research

and now how people are kind of judging the quality of the overall

videos that are with avatars in them? Any sense of what's

changing out there for people? You know, we deal with this a lot

in research. The difference between what people either say or what they

say they're going to do versus what they either actually do or their actual behavior

shows. So there's research that says that the best predictor of future

behavior is actually your past behavior. Right? So if you say I'm going

to go to the gym every day this year, but actually the better predictor would

be how many days out of the week did you go to the gym last

year is a better predictor of actually what you're going to do in the future.

So we have trouble reconciling this often with research. You know, do we, do we

listen to what they say or do we watch what they do? And for

this example, I'M not saying that people were incorrect when they said what they

prefer, but I do want to point out that although this video viewer research is

not old by any stretch, there has been huge

advancements in AI between. Even when we ran that study at the end of

2024 and this study that we're sharing now at the beginning of 2026, I

mean, 18 months, things have changed so much.

And so saying that they did prefer a human visual presenter at

that time versus actual higher quality AI avatar

presenter during the study is a little bit off. So they're

not exactly comparing the AI avatars versus each other in this new study.

Right. I mentioned they only saw one of these videos. They're not comparing the human

to the AI, they're seeing one in isolation and basically had to

evaluate the professionalism without comparing to what everyone else was seeing. So when

they actually view a video and are trying to learn from it, they look at

the screen content, they look at the size of the avatar, the voice that was

used, you know, the facial movements, the tone of voice, everything. So this

entire package is what viewers are evaluating when they say a video is

professional. And I will point out that actually in this study, almost

50% of them did not know it was an AI avatar. So the

knowledge of it being an AI avatar didn't really affect their

perception certainly of the professionalism or their perception of the quality.

Yeah, which is, which is super interesting that people couldn't tell for whatever, for

whatever reason. But you're right, the gap between

2024 and beginning here of 2026 is,

it's huge for AI. And so I think, yeah, it does

make sense that maybe people's perceptions are changing. I know when you look at the

quality of avatars or the quality of the technology, what it's able to

produce is just a different scale, Right?

Absolutely. So in the research,

one of the questions or I guess we alluded to or looked at was

when to use an avatar and when not to use avatars. Because I think this

is important because I think a lot of us who are in the learning and

development space, not everything is as clear cut as like just use

it, or maybe it's not use it. We're looking for that guidance. We're still trying

to figure these norms out of what makes sense. Are there any

highlights from the research about when we should use avatars, not use

avatars, any impact on maybe or

perceived impact on trust when we are or are not using them?

Yeah, that's a great question. We pretty much specifically did address that exact

fact in the survey. So there was a question that basically said,

when is it acceptable? In what style of video is it acceptable to use an

AI avatar to you? And we got pretty clear answers on that. So in

our study, our viewers were most accepting of an AI avatar in

an instructional or a video that heavily featured screen

based content. They were least comfortable when a personal

presence was needed, like a welcome video from a CEO

or a team update video, for example. Now, we didn't specifically ask

about trust, but you can kind of infer that if they found an AI

avatar acceptable, they would be like more okay with that video

overall. So if an AI avatar is used in a video that was

meant to distribute maybe personal or sensitive information, it could

really turn off your viewers. So our advice here at least is to be

intentional about the message of the videos, know your audience, and

kind of proceed, you know, with that information in mind.

Well, if I could follow up a little bit on that. It also seems like

the thing that you said earlier that 50% of people didn't know

when something was an avatar also maybe plays into

that kind of trust issue. If I don't know it's an avatar

and all of a sudden it's delivered maybe a very serious message that's

maybe inappropriate for an avatar that causes potentially real issues,

right? Yeah, absolutely. I mean, there's the

knowledge of whether it's an AI avatar to begin with and then there's the message

or the content that's trying to be delivered. So that's two separate factors there. And

you're right. If they don't necessarily know it's an avatar, it can

definitely seem sneaky, for lack of a better word.

If you're trying to, you know, use AI as a blanket for every human

visual presenter and every style of video and your viewers. And

especially if it's something like I mentioned, like a sensitive topic or a small team

update that's really going to make people, you know, sour on

your video because it's just not the appropriate metric. You should have spent, you

know, maybe an extra several minutes or however long it would take to be a

visual presenter in that video to kind of humanize that video quite a bit more.

Yeah, I'm waiting for the news articles to talk about the organization.

Hopefully never. But you know, use uses the AI to

avatar to lay off the workers or major

changes. We don't look forward to that day. But obviously there are some impacts

here. One, one of the impacts I think my audience is really interested in

is the learning aspect. Right. So You've got lots of

ways you could present content for people to learn from, particularly

from what you found in this research. Was there anything interesting about the type of

presentation of humans versus avatars and kind of

overall effectiveness in being able to perform a task?

Yeah, I mean, I kind of hit on this a little bit earlier too. But

in terms of the actual learning retention, the differences between four of the five

video types were very slight. Between the human full screen, human

picture in picture, the avatar full screen, and the audio visualizer.

We basically asked them kind of a pop quiz to answer a question that they

saw in the video. And between those four types of video, there was only really

a 3% difference in the amount of people that got the correct answer. So the

difference was very slight. But one of them really excelled above those, and that

is the avatar picture in picture, which actually performed 13%

better than any of those other four examples. So

I talked about this a little bit at the beginning, but people really rated that

video as higher quality. But alongside that, they got, you

know, the information that they received from that video. They were able to, you know,

internalize and answer a question later on in the survey more correctly with

that style of video. So like I said, they also had that

video also had the highest number of people that felt it was

professional, and it also had a higher learning retention. That's kind of like two stars

for that style of video, for sure. Yeah. And, you know, I

can think about different research from a different era. Right. Not looking

at avatars at all, but about on camera presence and, um,

you know, I think one thing that's always been interesting to me that with on

camera presence and again, not avatars, the research typically shows that

performance doesn't change, but people have a preference for it. Right. They

like having a person there or face there, but it's never.

It's, you know, usually a picture in picture, not all the time on screen. So

there are some elements that I think we could probably translate. But it is interesting

that they actually still perform better on the task. It's one of those ones. I'm

like, Stephanie, let's do more research on that. Let's find somebody to help us do

that, because that's super interesting about why that might be. And I know

we don't have answers for that, but something I'm definitely, definitely curious about.

And it does lead to the question of, like, as people are

leaning in here, maybe using more

avatars or want to use more avatars in their work,

is there advice that you can give us? Obviously, you're not an instructional

designer, you're not creating training videos. But from the research that you're seeing,

any advice that you could give people to help them use them maybe more strategically

or more effectively, I would say. Just

overall, and I think I said this with the AI voice research as well, is

if you have the flexibility and the buy in, you should try

it. It's not a you should never use this or you should always

use this. But my advice is to give it a try, kind of see

how it works out for you and your audience. And this study proves to me

that viewers are willing to watch videos with AI avatars,

accept the style, and really believe that the qual is sometimes good or even better

than with a human presenter. So for most cases, using an ar,

excuse me, AI avatar will not harm your video. It could even help

increase the information that your viewers retain. Now, there is an exception to

that which I touched on earlier, which is if your video is personal

or sensitive or something that really does need a human touch, we would not

recommend using an AI avatar for that situation because the viewers have told us

that that is not an acceptable use of that style. So I

certainly wouldn't say replace 100% of your human presenters with AI avatars.

But like I said earlier, I'd say know your video message, know your audience,

and basically proceed within reason. It's,

there's a comedian out there. I won't go into the whole story, but I'll rephrase.

One of the things that he would say and make it for this is like,

don't go avatar ing where you don't need no avatar in. Right? Like,

just don't, don't, don't go there. I,

I think there's, there's, like I mentioned at the kind of the opening, there are

people who are very skeptical and maybe hesitant

about avatars. And, and I love the advice, like if you have the means, you

have the kind of go ahead to try. But

anything specific out there for those people who are maybe saying no, I,

I'm negative towards these. I don't. Why would I want to use them

that we might. I. Look, I'm not trying to shift anyone's opinion here. We're not

trying to make giant waves, but I'm curious that it's a new technology, looks like

it has some potential. So what would we say to those folks who are a

little bit still on that, who are on that negative side? I

would kind of think about why they're skeptical. I'd say is it because they have

a mistrust of AI in general. There's kind of a sentiment towards that just in

culture today. Or is it because they have seen

videos where the AI avatar is terrible and it turned them off

from a video? So I think it's important to stay up to date on

what avatars look like and how far they have advanced to look human like,

as well as understanding basically what AI avatars can and cannot do.

As I mentioned with the particular types of videos earlier, you cannot replace

or you should not replace an AI avatar for a sensitive

or personal or, you know, small group video. But if

you're making a, you know, an instructional video that

primarily has a lot of screen content and you're looking

for something to provide a little visual interest or help engage

your viewers a little bit more, our research shows that viewers would be accepting of

an AI avatar in that situation. So if that's the type of video you're creating,

I think you have more leeway in terms of trying to include that in

your videos, but not on the alternative. As I mentioned, personal,

sensitive, you know, human touch. Don't do it.

Yeah, absolutely, Absolutely. Okay, so we've covered a lot

of research and again, it's out there on the TechSmith blog. I'm curious,

any questions that let's say we're looking at doing this again?

I hope we do. I hope we look at some other kind of related

areas. But any questions you'd want to try to answer if

and when you get a chance to do research again? Yeah, I

think the first thing is I would like to try and kind of compare these

videos to each other. Now I mentioned we did not do that in the study.

We had them watch one video and answer the questions. But I'd like to kind

of play around with trying to have them watch maybe a human

full screen and a human pip video and, you know, use that high

quality voice and kind of have them rate them versus each other

and kind of look at different aspects of that, whether, you know, we already talked

about learning, retention, maybe engagement, you know, which one do they feel

is more professional so that we can kind of evaluate one versus the other.

I'd also like to dig a little bit more deeper on engagement. We did not

really talk very much about engagement in this survey at all. But that

is primarily the focus of the video viewer study, which we did at the end

of 2024. So probably what my dream state would be would to

rerun this study but include a ton of metrics about engagement

and have them, you know, do multiple Videos versus each other, human versus

AI engagement, professionalism, quality, and probably be a

mega study. I don't know if my stakeholders will go for that because that seems

like a really big project. But I think it would be cool to kind of

mix those two and make one big study. Well, you've got my

support. Not that that means much, but I love the research

that you've done. And Stephanie, I think that

the thing that's really interesting to me about this is that one, we are in

this new era of this new technology that it is still a very

wide open, we don't know what we don't know kind of space.

And I'm. And I think there's a lot to learn and lot to understand.

So I'm grateful that you were willing to dive in. You and Troy

Stein really spearheaded this. And I'm just

blown away that it gives me at least something, at least for now,

knowing that in all of its imperfections, all the questions it doesn't answer because

that's good research. It never answers all the questions. It just creates more questions.

Typically. I love that it gives me at least a little bit of

guidance and direction because I'll be honest, I was a little

skeptical of avatars. And this has given me a little bit of that

impetus to feel like, yeah, I can, I can try doing that. I should try

using those a little bit more to see what's going to be most effective, particularly

on those repeatable things that change often because that's, you know,

if you got me, I can't record the same video a year

from now and have it look and feel the same. But an avatar, pretty sure

I can get them to be the same. So. Well, Stephanie, before

we go into our closing, anything else that we missed or didn't cover

that we should talk about for avatars? Probably

not the only my last kind of final two things I like to think about

is if you're interested in using AI avatar in video, my

advice would be to do some research and stay up to date on

what you can and, you know, what's out there and what's available for you. Matt,

as you mentioned, it's moving so fast that probably the research you've done

on Avatars 2 months ago is now may of date.

So try and immerse yourself if you want to use it. Make sure you can

understand how high quality they can be or, you know, what you want to include

in your video. And my other piece of advice, as we learned from the study,

is they are not applicable to all videos so make sure that you

know your message and you know your audience and you choose what is

appropriate for that video versus either, you know, going all in. We

would not necessarily recommend that. All right, well, thank you,

Stephanie. And so if people want to get involved in TechSmith research, we gave this

link last episode, but I think it's helpful to do it again. And where, where

can people connect with you and TechSmith Research? Sure.

So you can connect with me through my personal LinkedIn page, Stephanie Warnhoff.

Or if you are interested in more research at TechSmith, you can

send an email to our research email address, which is just

researchexmith.com we can get you signed up for,

you know, in depth interviews, for beta programs, for receiving some

surveys like this in the future. We have a lot of different research opportunities, so

emailing that email address and we'll basically get you on the list, so.

Perfect. Well, as we like to end most shows, Stephanie, we'd love

to hear from you on your final take. So Stephanie Warhol, what

is your final take? So my final take is that

in using AI avatars in your videos, you really need to know your audience

and know your purpose of your video. So if you are creating a video that

is long, instructional screen based, it's okay

to have some flexibility to try and add an AI avatar. But if you're creating

a personal or sensitive or small team

recording, just an update, it's not appropriate to replace a human presenter with

AI avatars. So make sure that you know your audience, know your message

and act appropriately in your videos. Perfect. Well,

thank you, Stephanie. Thanks for the great research. Awesome. Thank you very much,

Matt. You bet. All right everybody, if you're looking for

AI avatars, also just recommend go try TechSmith

Audio Camtasia Audit. It's got so many great cool features with the app. Got the

avatars, you can try those. You got the new 11 lab voices which sounds so

good. Hard to believe that they are AI. I can see why people

maybe said that's not AI, that's a real person. So go check those out. You

can try it for free. Or if you are using Camtasia, there's a

bunch of audio features that are available to you. The AI features are at the

higher level though, of course. But with that said, you know, part of this, why

we bring forth this research is to help you get better, make better decisions, think

through creating critically about what's going to make for good instruction, what's going to make

for good video. And of course in doing that process, you got to just keep

working at it. Keep trying and keep exploring and keep trying to get better

every single day. And with that said, I hope you take a little time

to level up every single day. Thanks, everybody.