hassaanr

Unfortunately, it looks like HN has given my little blog the hug of death. Should be back up soon

It'll depend on the use case- but with customers that are using it today we're seeing higher engagement and satisfaction rates. It's a different interface to communicate that is more natural to humans (our bullish opinion).

The way we see it is that this brings us closer to communicating with computers the way we communicate with each other. It has vision and can (not perfectly) take into account your expressions, your surroundings, and can respond accordingly.

Yeah we are! The issue we're seeing is with controllability and hallucinations in speech to speech models that we're trying to work through still

Great point. This is possible with CVI, but we didn't build it into the demos. We'll get it added

Glad we've been worth the follow :) Totally- we're seeing AI sales agents for calls, technical counterparts (think like AI sales engineer that joins the call with you), website embeds to answer initial questions or be a virtual sales rep.

Not a silly question at all! This is something we're still figuring out- when there should be disclosure that the video is generated. For some use cases (sales) it might hurt, however for others (e-learning) it might not matter at all.

Programmable videos or "event driven" videos is one of the core functionalities of our platform, especially with the API. We have product teams that are sending out videos based on events taking place on their platforms and it leads to such a cool experience!

Tavus doesn't require you to record names or dynamic variables at all after your initial recording, unlike send potion. We generate all content in your voice automatically- whether it's a name, a sentence about the weather or something else. We provide true on-demand, event driven videos.

As well- we'll dynamically generate background content too!

Absolutely, e-learning and similar use cases are what excite me the most. We're working with a number of healthtech and e-learning startups doing exactly that- empowering creators to build content that is more personalized and immersive at scale.

Absolutely! We're continuously researching and learning about how we can make technology such as ours safer.

Currently our platform has a number of mechanisms to prevent abuse. We require explicit voice disclosure to perform any training on a voice/avatar as well as ensure ownership of a voice/avatar and resulting content is in the hands of the individual, not a company. This is in addition to limits put on how you can utilize our platform and what templates you can make.

We totally expect there to be regulation for technology like this and we'd love to work with legislators to enforce responsible usage.

We're working on the flip side of this technology as well- we're developing tools to detect generated video content in order to promote safer usage in the future.

Totally understand your viewpoint. The reality is though that sales is really just one use case and definitely not my (our) favorite. Our focus is more on product experiences and that's where most of our efforts are going towards now.

The video doesn't have to be personalized to your name or contextual information about you specifically, although that is the most exciting prospect for most people. It could be a topic you're interested in being visualized.

We're working with an e-learning company for example to help instructors create their courses more easily in their own voice. To me that's a more exciting use case. If you're interested to learn more about how our roadmap is focusing on use cases such as this feel free to reach out.

This is a fantastic suggestion. Providing the end consumer perspective is definitely something we can do- we'll work on adding that to our website.

Language learning is a super cool use case! We're working on other languages atm

Wanna take some guesses? :)

Absolutely! CX and onboarding are one of the key use cases we see a lot of success in.

INB4 the roasts- we do limit what you can submit based on your template and preferences :)

Shhhhh :’)

Great question! At the moment we only support English, but are working on other languages to support as well. Any language in particular you’re looking for?

And that’s the real goal! Building more awesome product experiences. We’re working with e-learning companies, telehealth and other industries where it just isn’t scalable to provide a personal touch that engages the end user.

Starting a new game of the Witcher? Instead of personalized text the cut scene is Geralt talking to you directly :)

With sales though it can be hard to see how the chicken nuggets are made.

Take a look at the original that’s linked in the playground- she was pretty uncanny naturally haha. TBH we notice because we’re looking for it specifically- 99% of people our videos have gone out to have not noticed until someone has disclosed to them.

These are all good points. Do you see use cases that you’d personally find useful?

For example we’re working with a telehealth company to provide weekly/monthly health updates that they otherwise would send through emails and people would ignore.

I’m personally more interested in these product use cases than sales/marketing. This is also why we require set templates that limit what you can change.

We are also working on the flip side of this problem. In addition to building this platform Tavus is also building detection tools as we continue to explore what disclosure should be required on these videos. I know in that sense we’re both fire fighters and seem like we’re arsonist. However we’re really focused on providing a tool that builds immersive experiences while also fighting bad actors from other platforms that precede us/will come after us.

Our playground will let you put whatever you’d like..

However we are approving every use case manually to make sure it’s not crazy.

Oof sorry to hear you had that experience. Not everyone wants generated content and that totally makes sense.

To us this is the next evolution to something like MailChimp or as another commenter mentioned- handwriting style fonts in marketing material.

As for abuse- we are heavily focused on making sure our platform is not abused. There are multiple checks in place to make sure only you can generate videos with your voice/face.

It can be scary to see the gears of the machine. Sales is tough though and if this saves an SDR from spending hours making videos we think it’s beneficial. Video messaging is becoming the norm- this is just the next evolution.

There are also so many cool use cases beyond sales!!

HN is definitely more inquisitive and critical about things like these but the discussion is actually really helpful for us! Appreciate the thought!

Totally agree. The thought is that this is the next evolution of mailmerge. A different way to consume the same content!

I’ll have to give that one a read!

For sales and marketing I definitely see HN crowd cringing a bit. However there are a lot of applications beyond such as onboarding, coaching, e-learning where we can build a sense of connection that otherwise wasn’t possible.

Interesting point! We’re not looking to fool anyone. More so we’re looking to provide more personalized experiences that otherwise weren’t possible because of the scalability issue. Think Tony stark personally welcoming you to an Iron Man video game :)

Would you rather be told the content is generated before or after you see the video?

Agreed! The way we see it this is a tool to build a more efficient workflow just like mailmerge was when it was new- Sales/marketing is difficult and is getting more and more difficult by the day. SDRs will spend 12 hours recording 200 lead videos a week- Tavus can give that time back so they focus on what’s important to them.

Sales is a key part of every single company. Sometimes it can be seem unsavory when we see the reality of how it works.

You should hear her in real life! We have a link to the original video in the playground- you’ll notice it’s pretty much the same.