GoKawiil
Tech News
Character.ai, the platform that lets users chat with AI avatars modeled on fictional characters and real public figures, has filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The company had faced scrutiny over the platform's impact on teen mental health.
Video-generation startup Synthesia, valued at $4 billion, created an interactive digital avatar of a TechCrunch journalist during a visit to its new New York office. The avatar is trained specifically to answer questions about her article on why VC-backed startups commit more fraud than non-VC-backed ones. Synthesia had previously built a similar avatar of its own head of corporate affairs, Alexandru Voica, to field press questions about the company.
Google has released Live Avatar, a new addition to its Gemini 3.8 Live and Live Extended Thinking models that pairs real-time video personas with the platform's voice dialogue capabilities. The avatars can lip-sync, show facial expressions, and hold fluid conversations while using Gemini's reasoning to fetch data and trigger tool calls mid-dialogue. The feature is limited to Gemini Enterprise customers, who can choose from preset avatars or build custom ones from reference images via enterprise allowlisting, with all output watermarked using Google's SynthID.
Google has unveiled a 'Live Avatar' capability, showcasing a real-time animated digital representation of a person. Commentary following the demo has focused on questioning how convincing and technically sound the feature actually is.
Harvard Business School has launched an eight-week online entrepreneurship program priced at $699 that uses AI-generated avatars of its faculty to provide round-the-clock guidance to participants. The course lets aspiring founders interact with digital clones of professors instead of relying solely on scheduled lectures or office hours, and early participants have reportedly responded positively.
Harvard Business School has introduced HBS Foundry, an eight-week online entrepreneurship program priced at $699 that lets participants practice pitches and business conversations with AI video avatars of real faculty, including senior lecturer Jeff Bussgang. The course has already been piloted with more than 100 universities and guides users from refining a business idea through pitching investors and customers, combining course materials, AI tools and a peer community.