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.