Before You Produce an AI Avatar: What It Actually Means for People, Teams and Organisations

Insights / AI & Content Systems Before You Produce an AI Avatar: What It Actually Means for People, Teams and Organisations What to decide about representation, permissions, multilingual review and continuity before avatar production begins. Olena Soinikova · Research & field notes · 8 September 2026 On this page What an avatar is useful for HeyGen and the changing category A digital likeness as an asset Multilingual production Trust and transparency People, rights and platform control Accessibility in the brief Beyond the first video Planning before production AI Avatar Planning Checklist An organisation creates an AI avatar of one of its people. The first English video looks clear and professional. A few months later, the team needs the same message in four other languages. A partner asks whether it can use the avatar too. Some information in the original video needs updating. Then the person whose face and voice were used prepares to leave the organisation.   This is usually the point when the interesting questions begin. Who can create another video, what can the avatar say, who checks the translations, does the original permission cover a partner organisation, and what happens to existing videos after the person leaves? If the organisation changes its AI platform, what exactly can it take with it?   These are decisions about representation, trust, responsibility and continuity.   For organisations using AI video across several projects or languages, an avatar is becoming more than a production shortcut. It can become a reusable communication asset that continues to speak on behalf of an organisation long after the first video has been published.   That changes the planning considerably. The useful part is not that the avatar looks human The obvious advantage of an AI avatar is production.   A traditional video connects the message to a recording session. If the script changes, somebody may need to record again. Another language means another version. Six months later, a figure changes and part of the process starts again.   An AI avatar separates the presenter from that recording session. For training, project explainers, recurring information and multilingual content, this can be genuinely useful.   I see the relevance particularly clearly in European project environments. One organisation may need to explain the same programme or service to audiences in several countries, while the communication budget was certainly not designed for separate filming in every language.   This production advantage should not be confused with communication effectiveness.   Research in educational settings has found comparable learning outcomes between AI-presented and human-presented video in some contexts, while participants can still prefer the human experience. The evidence does not give organisations a universal rule about which presenter works better.   The task matters more.   A recurring explanation of how a programme works has different requirements from a personal testimony. A training module is different from a leadership statement. A routine update that needs to exist in six languages has little in common with a message whose value comes partly from the fact that a particular person chose to deliver it personally.   Sometimes an organisation needs a presenter. Other times it needs the presence of an actual person, and better visual realism cannot decide between the two. HeyGen shows how quickly the category has moved HeyGen is a useful example because the platform shows how much the idea of an AI avatar has expanded. I work with HeyGen and am a HeyGen Ambassador. This gives me a close view of the production possibilities, but I am increasingly interested in what happens around the technology once organisations start using it regularly. The original proposition was straightforward: provide a script, select or create a presenter and produce a video without arranging another filming session. The current model goes much further. HeyGen includes stock avatars, photo-based avatars and Digital Twins created from real people. A Digital Twin can reproduce a person’s appearance and voice for new scripts. The same production environment can also support multilingual video and localisation across more than 175 languages and dialects. At that point, the avatar is doing something more significant than replacing a filming session. A recognisable digital version of a person can be reused for new messages, updated without another recording and presented to audiences who speak different languages. That is a new capability for a communication team. It also shifts some of the work. Once a Digital Twin exists, somebody needs authority to use it. Future scripts need an approval route. New languages introduce new reviewers. A change in the person’s role may change what the avatar should represent. HeyGen provides the production capability. The organisation has to decide how that capability fits into its own communication system. The better these tools become, the more relevant that distinction becomes. A digital likeness is a different kind of asset The distinction is particularly important when an organisation moves from a stock presenter to a digital version of a real person.   A stock avatar represents no employee in the organisation. A fictional character can be given a defined communication role. A digital likeness of a CEO, trainer, project manager or expert carries an identity that already exists outside the platform.   Once that likeness has been created, a new appearance may no longer require a new recording. Someone prepares the script; the system generates the voice and image; the digital version of the person delivers words that the person did not personally record.   For routine production, that is extremely convenient. It also changes what approval means.   Approval of the original recording is one decision. Permission to generate future messages is a much broader one.   Over time, the difference matters. The employee may change position. Another project may want to use the avatar. A partner organisation may ask to include it in its own communication. The next script may cover a subject that was never contemplated when the avatar was created.   There is an audience dimension too. A digital likeness can imply expertise, personal