Hyper-Realistic AI Avatar Educators Are Here
Are schools prepared?
This morning, my wife came across a LinkedIn posting showing a lawyer demonstrating a hyper-realistic AI avatar of himself speaking multiple languages.
Take a look:
Would you have guessed it was an avatar? Maybe you instinctively doubt anyone can speak multiple languages so effortlessly and fluently. But, otherwise — would you have known?
Now watch the first 30 seconds of this video:
Were you surprised? I was. I did not anticipate that the first presenter was an avatar and not Dr Yannis.
Welcome to the world of hyper-realistic AI avatar educators. In these examples, the goals are primarily educational. In the first, Mr. Torres Varela’s trains his avatar to answer legal questions for clients. Dr. Yannis uses one to help teach law students. But the real push behind these technologies? Business. Companies see ultra-realistic AI avatars as a way to create more engaging and personalized experiences for their customers — more human-like interaction than traditional chatbots or video tutorials. Employees like that their AI avatar can attend meetings for them and take notes. These avatars are becoming virtual instructors, onboarding guides, and FAQ responders.
Now hyper-realistic AI avatars are entering schools and universities. Take Jacob Burke, Community Education Manager for Des Moines Public Schools. Jacob uses HeyGen to translate and personalize video messages for English Language Learners and their families. A recent HeyGen article notes that Jacob hopes every teacher in his school will use avatars to share student reports in the home language of the student’s family. Doing so could break down language barriers and strengthen parent-school relationships.
Jacob also created an avatar to share inspirational stoies on TikTok. When he filmed himself storytelling, he had 60 followers. Now, he has over 23,000. He’s transparent throughout all of this. When someone commented that his stories would have more meaning if he presented them himself, he replied:
Maybe. But with my poor public speaking skills, the stories would likely land flat and not as many people would hear them because they wouldn’t get shared, liked, or mentioned 🤷♂️so I guess that is the question, is it better to hear the story in a natural state of someone public speaking or would you rather have it told in a very smooth cadence and easy to listen to?
Whatever your reaction, the AI avatar clearly helped boost his reach and connections.
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New Technologies (New Motivation?)
Talking avatars aren’t new. Back in 2020 I wrote about Neon, a talking Samsung videobot that could smile, nod, and laugh. Neon was touted as a potential tutor, but soon faded from public view. Not long after, language models like GPT-3, then GPT-4, brought depth and nuance to machine-generated conversation. Text-to-speech evolved into fluid, emotive voices. Facial animation became real-time and eerily lifelike. And suddenly, the pieces that Neon once hinted at began to fit together.
Platforms like Synthesia and HeyGen now enable anyone with a script and an idea to create a hyperrealistic teacher, tutor, or presenter—in any language. And now that HeyGen and Sora have integrated, even more refined movements, expressions, and actions are possible.
Jacob Burke’s story is anectodal , but empircal research suggests that the personalization and human-like interaction offered by AI avatars can enhance learner engagement and motivation. A study published in Frontiers in Education notes that AI avatars can can enhance motivation by providing immediate feedback and fostering engagement through realistic interactions. Another study found that AI avatars create immersive learning environments that lead to increased enthusiasm.
And it’s not just in classrooms. The incredible popularity of Character.AI. shows how people — especially young people — feel drawn to conversations with engaging AI personas. It builds personal connections to historical characters, celebrities, and more, providing many users with a sense of companionship and emotional support.
This isn’t simply entertainment. Students interacting with chatbots modeled after culturally or historically significant figures often exhibit increased motivation and engagement. Mike Kentz has written about how his high school students had emotional, even therapeutic, exchanges with a chatbot version of Holden Caulfield. Several treated Holden like a peer, conversing about family issues, social pressures or challenges in school.
Avatars also scale. A single AI tutor can support hundreds of students at once, ideally adjusting its delivery to each learner’s pace and style. This could be especially valuable in under-resourced schools and after-school programs lacking qualified tutors..
Hyper-realistic AI avatars can deliver real-time, individualized instruction in the student’s preferred language. That means just-in-time help with challenging concepts, or review—especially for students who might hesitate to ask a teacher. For their part, teachers could use an AI avatar to offload repetitive workload tasks and focus on instructional design, personalized feedback, or relationship-building.
Talking versus Conversing
It’s easy to find talking avatars on YouTube. You can even build one yourself. But an important trait of an effective educator isn’t the ability to talk—it’s the ability to converse.
The value of an AI avatar isn’t in how lifelike it looks or sounds, but how educationally effective it is in conversation. That means its responses must be cohesive and coherent, and maintain logical flow and relevance. Conversational fluidity matters, too as well as adaptability to student needs. These are criteria that help define meaningful AI-powered dialogue.
You can test this out by visiting HeyGen’s new “Labs” section. I chose to converse with “Bryan,” a fitness coach, about safe exercises after my recent knee surgery. Bryan and I had a fluid conversation 6-minute conversation. He understood ny questions well and responded appropriately and effectively. While he didn’t adapt tone or complexity—my questions were fairly basic—he handled everything smoothly. If I has become confused or frustrated, I sense that Bryan would have maintained his calm and positive demeanor.
I’d encourage you to watch Dr. Yannis’s interaction with a hyperrealistic AI avatar. While the technology is a dated — 6 months ago is a lifetime in AI video — the conversation is fluid and stays on point.
And Now for the Scary Part
After seeing how easy it is to create a hyperrealistic AI avatar it’s hard not to think about grave societal dangers. They could manipulate public opinion, and undermine journalism and public discourse. AI can challenge our ability to discern truth from fiction. (You could argue that process is already underway.) And what if students are increasingly turn to avatars instead of human connection, accelerating loneliness, social detachment, and a weakening of community bonds?
Education is the Frontline
The risks are real. But ignoring the technology simply allows powerful, unregulated to gain ground. If schools don’t teach students how to recognize, interpret, and critically engage with AI avatars, then TikTok, YouTube, or anonymous influencers will do it first—and without safeguards. In a classroom, the avatars can be managed and curated for educational purposes, analyzed for appropriateness, and used as case studies for ethical teaching and learning. Futhermore, for marginalized or under-resourced communities, avatars can expand access, not limit it.
The question really isn’t whether AI avatars belong in schools. The question is whether we want to leave students unprepared as they inevitably meet them elsewhere.
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While I was reading this article I thought back to when I was thirteen years old and how classes were more complicated than the previous years. I remember that I had many questions and I never asked to the teacher because I felt afraid about bullying. So, I think the avatars alternative is very helpful in those cases when you have these kind of behaviors. On the other hand, with a critical perspective, I think that we have to be very careful with AI, as Tom mentioned. We have to use AI with a big component of ethics because it impacts whether in the future we will be able to make the distinction beteewn reality and fake. Because AI at this point can make the deepest damage to the world.