Introduction

Let’s suppose you’ve just had the most brilliant idea for a product, and you even got through the second most difficult challenge: finding the perfect name for it. Now comes the easy part: register your domain, hoping nobody has claimed it yet, and create your fancy, visually appealing website that may attract lots of customers and investors worldwide.

In the earliest stage of Colossyan’s startup journey (August of 2021), the founders have found themselves in this very same situation, and they have bought the colossyan.com domain at dreamhost.com. It was the most budget-friendly alternative for starting off with a domain and a website, at least for non-frontend engineers. This article is about this decision and our journey with Dreamhost that never ceased to amaze us. Not wanting to judge Dreamhost though, without it, Colossyan wouldn’t even exist, but that extra $5 for not buying this domain in another, more established DNS provider has still had its effect to this day.

The API

When you check a product’s attractive main page it is usually not your first thought to check the product’s API documentation. Even if we did that, we probably would have just gone along with Dreamhost anyways as we wouldn’t use it, or would we?

Obviously, the Dreamhost API is used for managing the DNS record in Dreamhost. It has been written long ago, and has never been rewritten to modern standards. That being said, it has the following “features” that should be kept in mind when interacting with it:

• It does not support even the most primitive (Basic Auth) authentication.
  You must provide your API key in a query parameter. Hey, at least we’re not communicating through HTTP, right?
• There are only “Add”, “List” and “Delete” endpoints. There’s no support for getting DNS records for paths or filtering them on server-side.
• Every operation, including the “Add” and “Delete”, uses the GET HTTP method. Intuitive. E.g. an add DNS record operation
• Has pretty interesting rate limiting support.
  Could not find out the exact values, but after you reach your hourly limit, it will deny your access for at least an hour. No documentation.
• It also has no API wrapper/library available at the time.

Application and workaround

As Colossyan has matured, so did our technology stack. The first version of the Creator was written in Next.js, which enables the creation of full-stack web applications by extending the latest React features and integrating powerful Rust-based JavaScript tooling for the fastest builds. Next.js comes with a powerful platform called Vercel, which helps with the tooling of Next.js and enables blazing fast builds and continuous deployment for your application.

The reason why we didn’t start with Vercel in the first place is because when the first Colossyan application prototype was created, we didn’t have any customers, and would like to avoid locking us to an expensive vendor at day 0. We started using AWS Amplify for a brief period, but realized quickly (but probably not quickly enough), that it does not yield faster development - at least for us. When we migrated away, we’ve already opted out from many NextJS features, and it became difficult to go back.  A few months later we become even farther away from this goal. Being an AI-based video-making platform, we support huge uploaded videos as well, certain pieces of information like the duration and the codecs of uploaded assets are better calculated server-side before sending them down to our AI models. This has caused as big as 8Gb memory spikes (compared to the basically ~100Mb average memory footprint) which was making it infeasible to run this in Vercel, as that platform is focused more on edge use-cases and less on resource heavy processing.

The ability to spin up temporary deployments is crucial to maintain quick feedback loops of development teams, so the demand was given. The resolution was to implement our own solution, on top of an automation of our used DNS provider, Dreamhost.

The implemented solution was actually a 2 day work in June 2022. The automation uses
github-pr-controller for synchronizing the pull requests of a repository and go-dreamhost to create URLs (domain records) for a pull request. The rest of the automation is a closed-sourced Kubernetes controller which syncs the Kubernetes pods (with images of the build Next.js image) and ingress rules.

The root domain

WordPress might be familiar for some folks, since it’s been around since 2003. It’s a versatile and user-friendly content management system (CMS) that empowers individuals and businesses to effortlessly create and manage stunning websites. It’s easy to get started with, but you will hit its limitation pretty quickly, especially if you want to create something extraordinary.

In pre-investment it’s crucial to deliver as fast as you can, and the landing page just serves you as a quickly updated pitch deck. However, after the first paycheck comes, it is wise to revisit your choices so that you can more or less maintain your momentum for the future. As Colossyan turned out to be an idea worth spending investors money on, the main page has been given to a dedicated content management team, and it has been also migrated from WordPress to Webflow. It has been assigned with a dedicated designer as well!

The problem

Everything seemed nice and steady until the company matured enough to adopt a status page in November of 2022. After some internal discussions we’ve adopted Betteruptime by Betterstack (another alternative was Statuspage by Atlassian) - this topic in itself may also deserve a blog post. It became quite clear within days that the main page was quite unstable. For minutes, colossyan.com could become unreachable, and it was due to mostly DNS errors. 

It has been found out later that the WordPress integration was never disabled, and the managed WordPress provided by Dreamhost automatically tried to override the root domain DNS records that we configured to point at our webflow deployment. After disabling the managed WordPress the problem got resolved. Look at our status page since then - incredible.

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Subdomains

When Colossyan reached the critical mass and started thriving, more and more domain-related requests were coming from the organization. Requests like:

• I have integrated the managed billing solution, could you please add the 1.2.3.4 A DNS record to the billing.colossyan.com subdomain?
• Marketing: can you please fix the DMARC records so that the mails sent to the customer won’t end up in the Spam folder?
• Can you please add the DNS record ASAP? Only you have the credentials to the domain portal.

Solution

Keeping in mind DevOps best practices, we’ve started brainstorming ways to support these configuration changes in a more secure, easier and controlled way. Obviously we don’t need to come up with anything brand new - we needed GitOps to control these changes.

• Changing something in the UI is inherently error-prone. Copy-pasting the content of the record from Slack is not life insurance. -> Declarative
• Even in a team of two we sometimes got confused whose responsibility was to do the changes and what was the current state of the DNS records. -> Versioned and immutable
• Only one person in the team had the credentials, which was passed around when needed -> continuously reconciled

For a second we obviously thought about creating a DNS manager component, but since there’s already a buzzword for what I wanted to implement, let’s go with a well established GitOps tool: Terraform. (We’ve already been using Terraform for a while, Pulumi would also be a great choice).

We have implemented the Dreamhost Terraform provider in May 2023 within 2 days. The provider is already used to manage our DNS records for all of our subdomains. 

Implementing your own TF provider is also a very fun activity, would definitely recommend doing it.

Summary

As you can see, Dreamhost came with a price that we’re still paying today, however, we are in owe for being a flexible provider to start with and enabled the company in day 0 to iterate rapidly.

As for the future, you might ask, why not just migrate to a hosting solution that already has a Terraform plugin or has an extensive documentation? The answer is yes, that’s actually in our roadmap, and we will definitely want to make that step, but we’re not in a hurry now.

The world of Learning and Development is on the verge of a revolution, with generative AI taking center stage. From creating highly engaging and personalized learning experiences to reducing the cost and time of producing content, generative AI is transforming the way we approach L&D. As the founder and CEO of an AI startup that helps L&D teams utilize AI video as a tool for effective learning content creation, I’ve spent a lot of time investigating the learning and development sector, as well as generative AI and its capabilities. 

As a result, I strongly believe that whether or not you’re planning to use generative AI in your workflow, it is important to understand what it is, its advantages, and how to overcome the potential challenges that it may impose — and that’s exactly what I’m planning to explore through this article, with practical examples of how Colossyan utilizes the potential of generative AI to empower creators.

The future is already here, so being informed is the first step of embracing it; however, before we explore ways of harnessing the power of generative AI in L&D, let’s begin by answering this simple question: what even is generative AI?

What is Generative AI?

Let me give you a simple explanation — generative AI is a branch of artificial intelligence techniques that can generate various types of content based on a user's prompt. These generative AI systems use neural networks, deep learning, and natural language processing techniques to learn from existing data sets and produce new data that resembles the original data. Let’s look at some examples of content can be created using generative AI:

Text. GPT-4, Bard and similar language models have the ability to generate high-quality text in various writing styles, and can be used for content creation, translation, summarization, and conversation. They have the potential to revolutionize the way we interact with technology by providing contextually appropriate and virtually indistinguishable human-like text.

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ChatGPT: One of the most well-known examples of Generative AI, with over 100 million users, ChatGPT has already achieved the title of the fastest-growing application in history.

Images. Text-to-image platforms such as Dall-E and Midjourney generate images from prompts — they learn from large datasets and generate high-quality images that resemble real-world objects. This technology has a wide range of applications, including content creation, prototyping, and visual storytelling.

Audio. TTS (Text-to-Speech) such as ElevenLabs and other audio generators can create voice overs in various voices, languages and accents, as well as music and sound effects for all kinds of purposes, from video production to e-commerce and gaming.

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Video. AI video platforms like Colossyan provide creators with an opportunity to produce high-quality videos for learning & development, communications and even marketing, all in a fraction of the time it would take with traditional video production.

How are AI videos generated? Let me share some insider information about the generative AI in Colossyan with you: as explained in one of our previous articles, Colossyan uses neural rendering, a technique that involves training neural networks to understand and simulate the physical properties of real-world objects and environments. To generate an AI video, Colossyan first captures real-world video footage of the desired scene, along with depth and motion information. This data is then fed into a neural network, which uses it to generate a 3D model of the scene.

The neural rendering techniques are employed to produce a textured and photorealistic image out of the 3D model. The networks are trained to produce realistic textures and studio quality lighting. The underlying 3D model can be manipulated and animated with the help of conditional generative networks and with the help of neural rendering, a photorealistic image can be generated based on the new scene parameters, allowing for the creation of dynamic, engaging AI videos. Colossyan's use of neural rendering enables the creation of AI videos that can easily be used for professional video-making, while also providing flexibility and customization options that traditional video production methods cannot match.

To summarize my point, generative AI has numerous applications, from content creation all the way to personalized chatbots that can engage in human-like conversations,  capable of taking learning programs and even customer service to a whole new level. Overall, it is clear that the possibilities for generative AI are vast and continue to expand as the technology advances. 

The Limitations of Traditional L&D Approaches

From having conversations with leading learning professionals and actively investigating the sector, I can see how corporate training has evolved rapidly over the past two decades. The rise of the LMS, as well as rapid authoring tools has led to a profusion of elearning in many forms. This content is often paired with classroom training to create blended, or flipped learning experience. Organizations recognize the value of training their people, with the global L&D market estimated to be worth 357 billion U.S. dollars.  But for all the investment, L&D teams often face criticism that the learning experiences they offer are flawed, and fail to meet the individual needs of employees. Specifically, learning experiences face limitations such as:

Lack of personalization. One-size-fits-all training programs tend to be the norm, but this can make it difficult for organizations to address the specific needs and skill levels of each employee. Without personalized training, employees may struggle to reach their full potential, and organizations may fail to achieve their desired results. Furthermore, when designing learning at scale, it is very difficult to produce content that is optimally designed for each individual, and so learning designers tend to design experiences that will work best ‘for most people’. 

Time and cost. In addition to the issue of personalization, traditional L&D methods can also be time-consuming and costly. Scaling L&D efforts across large organizations can be a daunting task, especially when it involves delivering training in-person or through other traditional means like filming video, or designing complex elearning. This gets even more complicated when multiple languages are involved, or updates to content are required..

Limited interactivity. Finally, these methods often have limited interactivity and do not provide opportunities for learners to apply new skills in real-world situations. Interactions need to be pre-determined by learning designers, for instance, in a branching scenario, even though learners are given the opportunity to make a decision, outcomes are predetermined, and there are only so many decisions they can make. As a result, employees may not fully engage with the material or retain the knowledge they learn, which can have a negative impact on the organization as a whole. 

How Generative AI Can Transform L&D

Generative AI is already known to enhance L&D efforts in many ways, and I’m a strong believer that it has the transformative power to make L&D more effective than ever before. It can help boost course content ideation and creation by generating new ideas and producing relevant, engaging text, as well as audio and visual content. However, the benefits don’t stop there, as generative AI can also elevate L&D experiences with:

Personalization. Generative AI can be used to make learning much more personal and engaging: a good example would be KhanAcademy, where they utilize generative AI to power their Khanmigo assistant, which provides personalized help and guidance to students. The assistant is designed to understand the user's specific learning needs and provide tailored feedback and support, allowing learners to not only have access to information, but also to receive excellent guidance on how to effectively engage with it.

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Planning. Generative AI can be a helpful tool for L&D strategy planning, as explored in the video below. Just like using Google to look up information, effective prompting can help you utilize generative AI to structure information, design a strategy and even apply relevant data (just make sure not to share any sensitive data!) to maximize the relevance of the output. 

Content creation. A good example of this is AI video, which is a great tool for increasing engagement and providing valuable learning experiences, while reducing the cost and time needed to produce learning videos. Another benefit of AI video is its flexibility — while updating traditional videos can be challenging and time-consuming, creating AI videos is as simple as creating presentations, which makes it very easy to update and adapt them whenever needed. Generative AI can also help with localization, which allows creators to adapt videos to different languages and cultural contexts, making content accessible to a global audience.

Overcoming the Challenges of Implementing
Generative AI in L&D

Implementing generative AI in L&D requires addressing ethical considerations, such as ensuring that AI-generated content is unbiased and transparent. While generative AI can produce some very impressive content, I’d like to highlight that it still requires human input and review in order to produce truly effective results:  AI is most effective when used as an assistant and a collaborator, not a replacement. Here are some other challenges to consider:

Decision-making. People are more than data, and even with the most accurate input, you could still get AI-generated results that do not necessarily reflect what’s best for your specific learner or team. For that reason, I believe that it is important to work together with the AI, and not rely on it to do all the work for you: it is always a good practice to review the decisions made and the content produced with the AI, and where needed, adapt them using your own knowledge and expertise. 

Credibility. Reviewing the credibility of AI-generated content is a crucial aspect of using generative AI — and this is where human efforts are most required. All generative AI models clearly state that there is always a chance of misinformation with AI-generated content, which is why it is important to ensure that you prompt the generative AI to only draw on credible sources for learning related materials, as well as carefully review the content generated. 

Privacy and intellectual property rights. Using AI-generated videos ethically involves respecting privacy and intellectual property rights. It is important to ensure that personal information is not disclosed, and that the content does not violate copyright laws or infringe on someone's privacy. For that reason, Colossyan only allows creating custom avatars when given full consent from the person requesting their digital actor, with creators only being able to request a digital actor of themselves, and not of other people. 

As the founder of a platform that provides creators with powerful AI tools, I understand that with great technology comes great responsibility, and therefore place a lot of importance on ensuring that the AI content generated in Colossyan Creator is used respectfully and for the right reasons.

My Prediction for the Next 5-10 Years

While the phenomenal speed of AI progress makes it difficult to predict when and how AI will affect various aspects of L&D, as well as life in general, I have some ideas about what could happen in the near future. Some of my predictions include:

Full democratization of video creation. In my opinion, the next 5-10 years will see the end-to-end creation of video content by anyone, enabling full democratization of video creation. Similarly to how Colossyan’s current AI Prompt-to-Video feature allows creators to produce video drafts by simply entering a prompt, this technology is likely to advance much further, with AI-generated videos going way beyond “talking heads'', and creators likely being able to generate complex, fully AI-generated videos.   

Learning content personalization. Additionally, personalization of learning content will match AI-generated learning strategies to specific viewers, while the development of custom video avatars will make learning much more immersive and engaging. With personalized learning content, generative AI will completely transform the way we approach learning, as anyone will be able to engage with information in ways that work best for them. It will be much easier to track individual progress, as well as identify how knowledge gaps can be tackled. 

Interactivity. Interactivity will also become a major component of learning, allowing viewers to engage in real-time experiences, and resulting in increased engagement, retention, and application of knowledge. AI-powered interactive learning tools like simulations, games, and virtual reality environments will enable learners to practice skills and apply knowledge in a risk-free and immersive way. This will lead to more effective and efficient L&D strategies and better learning outcomes for individuals and organizations. 

The Future for Colossyan

The potential of generative AI goes beyond L&D, and here at Colossyan, providing a powerful tool for learning teams is only the beginning. Our vision is to revolutionize the learning, commercial and entertainment industries, as we continue to enable creators all over the world to embrace the future by harnessing the power of generative AI.  

Thank you for reading this article, and I hope that you’ve found it useful! If you want to have a practical overview of how generative AI works, I encourage you to try out Colossyan — our free trial allows anyone to experience the power of AI video for themselves. Feel free to reach out to our team if you have any questions – I’d be very interested in hearing your thoughts on this topic. Happy creating!

Best,

Dominik from Colossyan

Imagine having a digital version of yourself that interacts with your friends, attends work meetings, and tries on new clothes. But that's not all, there are other digital humans too!

Your doctor can examine you thoroughly, your yoga instructor is available 24/7, and there's even a salesperson to help you choose a new car. We already communicate with technology on a daily basis, but something's missing. Did you know that 55% of communication is body language, 38% is tonality, and only 7% is words?

That's why digital humans are about to revolutionize our virtual interactions and have a huge impact on businesses and society. They look, act, and think like real humans, and they can even nod, wink, and roll their eyes. Technology already allows us to use digital humans in our communications, and soon everyone will have their own digital twin. So let's dive deeper into this exciting topic!

We already communicate with technology every day, but what's missing is that uniquely human emotional connection. That's where digital humans come in. 

These lifelike beings look, act, and think like real humans, combining a realistic appearance with the ability to listen and understand meanings. They not only speak, but also nod, wink, and roll their eyes – humanizing our virtual interactions like never before. 

With technology already allowing us to use digital humans in our communications, it's only a matter of time before everyone has their own digital twin. And this radical transformation in our online communication is set to largely impact businesses and society. So let's delve deeper into this exciting topic and see what the future holds!

What are digital humans?

In short, digital humans are human-like virtual beings that represent oneself in different virtual situations.

You might be wondering, are digital humans the same as avatars? The answer is yes, digital humans are a subcategory of avatars.

A digital avatar is an electronic image that is manipulated by the user. Digital humans, however, look just like real people, whereas traditional avatars can be more abstract. From simple illustrations to digital twins, our online representations are getting more and more sophisticated, and the avatar economy is on the rise. 

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Digital humans are designed so that other digital avatars or real people can interact with them, and their human likeness combined with artificial intelligence (AI) makes communication feel more real. This has a huge potential to radically change our online interactions. 

When we talk about digital humans, there are two possible identities they represent:

• A digital human can be a digital twin of a real person (based on their anatomical, physical, and biological traits)
• A digital human can be a fictional character (based on the appearance of an actor or entirely generated by computer)

Isn't that cool? Let's explore the world of digital humans and see how they can change our online interactions!

What do digital humans do?

Well, the goal of digital humans is to recreate human interaction – and do it at scale. After all, we're social creatures and crave interactions with others. 

That's why many companies have recognized the potential of adding a character or a mascot to their communication. Just think of Siri, Duo from Duolingo or the famous Clippy who helped us navigate computers in the 90s.

But digital humans go beyond chatbots and digital assistants. Because they can communicate via verbal and nonverbal cues, they are used for various scenarios: they can help us find answers online, guide us through various processes, give advice, and more.

Research indicates that people can better relate to digital humans that have a more realistic appearance. At the moment, the most realistic digital humans are the ones by Colossyan – besides verbal communication, they can also communicate via non-verbal cues, such as facial microgestures (winking, nodding, frowning…). However, realistic full-body avatars are still a work in progress.

Digital humans are rapidly entering our everyday lives, especially in the form of conversational AI. According to Emergen Research, the global market for digital humans will grow from $10 billion in 2020 to about $530 billion in 2030. 

Imagine a world where digital twins can try on clothes and make-up, hang out with friends, and even attend work meetings – all in the virtual world. That's the future of digital humans.

Where are digital humans used?

Because digital humans are able to replicate real-world communication on a large scale, they're becoming increasingly popular in many different use cases.

From customer support representatives to instructors for training and education content, digital humans are everywhere. Plus, they are also used as presenters in marketing and sales videos, as well as digital influencers.

Here's an example of how you can use a digital human instructor in a sales training video:

As digital humans become more and more realistic and emotionally intelligent, the number of use cases for them is growing. In fact, we believe that soon each of us will have our own digital twin – and with the great technological advances being made every day, this is becoming more and more achievable.

How do you make a digital human using AI?

Are you ready to create a digital human using artificial intelligence? It's easier than you may think!

Colossyan is the industry leading AI video generation platform that excels in leveraging AI avatars to bring your videos to life. The platform offers 150+ stock avatars of all different ages, ethnicities, and professions that you can instantly use as your on-screen video talent. All of Colossyan's stock avatars are created from footage of human actors who have given their explicit consent to have their likeness used as a digital human.

Here's a closer look at Colossyan's selection of digital human AI avatars:

However, some projects may require AI avatars of a specific person on your team, such as your company founder or brand spokesperson. Fortunately, Colossyan supports the creation of custom avatars, meaning you can create a digital human of yourself that both looks an sounds like you.

Colossyan offers two different custom avatar options: Studio Avatars, which are professional quality and shot in a production studio, and Lite Avatars, which you can create at home using just your laptop camera.

Custom avatars do take a few days to create, so using stock AI avatars allows you to begin using digital humans in your video content in a matter of minutes.

What are the technologies used in developing digital humans?

Are you curious about what technologies are used to create digital humans? It's incredible how they can look and act so much like a real person, with realistic body language, micro gestures, facial expressions, and other nonverbal cues.

But it's not just their physical appearance that makes them so impressive - their ability to understand and use language is equally impressive. So, let's take a look at the complex combination of technologies that make digital humans possible:

• 3D scanning to serve as a basis for 3D modeling
• 3D modeling to create a 3D model of a person
• Natural language processing to understand voice commands
• Natural language generation to form responses
• Artificial intelligence to process input and learn from patterns 

The biggest challenge for developers?

As you might've guessed, the biggest challenge with digital humans is ensuring they actually look and sound like real humans. Digital humans that seem overly computerized tend to suffer from the uncanny valley effect.

The uncanny valley is a phenomenon that occurs when a synthetic human looks and acts almost like a real human, but there is something slightly off that makes them seem unreal. This can cause a feeling of unease or even revulsion in people who encounter them.

However, as technology continues to advance, it's likely that the uncanny valley effect will gradually disappear and digital people will become indistinguishable from real people.

Why do we need digital humans?

Have you ever thought about why digital humans are becoming more and more prevalent in online communication? Well, they're pretty amazing! Not only do they have real business value (think virtual assistants and digital employees), but they're also a cornerstone of our digital identities in the virtual world. Here's why:

• They're available 24/7, need no vacation days, no salary, and no sleep.
• They're a scalable and affordable solution for businesses.
• They enhance our online interactions by combining verbal and non-verbal cues.
• They're accessible, as they can easily switch between languages and cultural contexts.
• They ensure anonymity when communicating about sensitive topics.
• They redefine the way people communicate with technology and with each other.

In short, digital humans add a human connection to the virtual world, improve our communication, and thus make our (digital) lives better. P

lus, have you ever heard of the Proteus effect? It's named after the Greek god Proteus, who could change his appearance at will – just like AI allows us to quickly change certain characteristics of a digital human.

This means you can change their tone of voice, language, hairstyle, clothes, skin color etc. on the fly, removing barriers to inclusion and allowing for greater identity expression and exploration. Pretty cool, huh?

5 risks that come with digital humans

Digital humans are the future of AI technology. But as with any new technology, there are potential risks to consider. Here are 5 things you need to know about the potential risks of digital humans:

• The uncanny valley: When interacting with a digital human, it can be a bit unsettling to realize it's not a real person. This can lead to a loss of trust.
• User privacy: People tend to disclose more personal information when they think they're talking to a human-like person online. This means we need more regulations to protect our privacy.
• Ethics: Creating digital humans can bring up stereotypes and false representations of society. We need to be mindful of these issues when selecting or designing digital humans for different use cases.
• Human interactions: What happens when our digital identities are no longer tied to the physical world? We don't yet know how this will affect human interactions, which are the building blocks of our society.
• Identity: With the ability to reinvent ourselves in digital worlds, trust and transparency can become a concern. It's important to consider the consequences of this newfound freedom.

The future of human interaction

The age of digital humans has arrived, and it's not going anywhere. Get ready for the future of human interaction.

Not only can digital humans help you massively scale your content creation efforts, but they can make doing so more cost effective too. No need to hire human actors, deal with filming delays, and take on cumbersome editing software anymore.

Instead, Colossyan allows you to create the same professional-quality content in a matter of hours instead of days or weeks.

Ready to come see the power of digital humans for yourself? Give Colossyan Creator a try for free today.

If you’re in the learning and education space, you know how competitive it is.

Your audience has a broad range of options when it comes to browsing for content on the internet. They can get information about any given topic from a number of websites and publications. So, what makes your learning experiences stand out? Why should someone choose your site over another?

Content is the key to drawing your visitors in. You need to put your best foot forward if your students to stick around and return again and again. Short videos and online classes are the base of the learning process today. Video content can have a large effect on student engagement as they provide something unique and visual elements and interactive features so they won’t be able to look away.

Let’s take a look at 5 reasons why video parts in the curricula for student learning are a must-have for for anyone working with learning and education.

Video content for learning and education  is a new visual channel to stand out

If you want to make sure your website or course gets noticed, you need to make sure your content is easily distinguishable from the rest. Video for learning and education is an excellent way to differentiate yourself from your competitors.

It’s the perfect way to make your content stand out from the rest because of two main reasons:

• Video content has not been part of traditional courses. It’s not something that’s used enough  on education and learning websites, considering how effective educational videos are in getting thourgh important information and include visual elements in the curricula. 
• Video content can be incredibly engaging, entertaining, contributes to active learning, helps working memory, and overall supports student learning. Consequently, it means visitors will be drawn to it like a magnet and will want to stick around. They won’t be able to look away because your video content will be so captivating and engaging even more so with interactive features and compelling visual elements. Utilizing video will help you reach the desired learning outcome with less cognitive effort from the student's side, while the length of time students spend studying can be also reduced. 

Cognitive load theory has important implications to this point. The theory refers to the amount of working memory resources used. Earlier research suggests, the fundamental tenet of cognitive load theory is that the quality of instructional design will be raised if greater consideration is given to the role and limitations of working memory. With increased distractions, particularly from cell phone use, students are more prone to experiencing high cognitive load which can reduce academic success. 

People love video content

People have a general love for video content. It’s a natural human instinct to want to see visuals along with content.

This is especially true when it comes to topics like education and learning. Student engagement through video can be increased with the concepts being taught come to life in front of their eyes. Visually appealing video design is the way to go if you want to hook your viewers and reel them in. Studies show that productive use of video supports the retention of more information from video content than from written articles, while reducing the cognitive load.

Visuals inspire working memory and sensory memory to contribute to remember additional information afterwards. It’s a great way to make sure your visitors get the extra information they want from your website and then some. If you want to make sure your readers remember what they’re reading, you need to make sure your content has visuals accompanying it. This is where video content comes in handy. It’s a great way to make sure your viewers understand the content and learn from it.

Video can teach while keeping people entertained

If you want to make sure your visitors are captivated and eager for more, video is the way to go. You can have a variety of video content on your site to cater to different learning styles using informal and formal language, different video design and types of segmenting your content. This way, your content is accessible to a larger audience.

If you’re not sure what kind of video content to include on your website, it’s best to stick with the tried-and-true methods of teaching like a how-to video. This type of video is great for teaching people how to do certain tasks, like installing software, designing websites, to mention some common examples. You can also use video to teach more complex topics like math, history, etc. Using video for education is a great way to mix entertainment with education. This is especially important for kids who are in the age range where they’re learning a lot of new things.

Video is a must have if you wanna stay competitive in the digital age

This goes back to the first reason why video content is a must-have for learning and education websites: it makes your content stand out from the crowd. If you want your website to be at the top of the game and on the path to success, you need to include video content on your site.

The competition is fierce, and if you don’t use every method at your disposal to rise above the rest, you could fall behind. Video content is a great way to gain an edge on your competition and make sure your site stays at the top of the game. It’s the best way to grab your visitors’ attention and keep it. Without engaging content, you risk losing your audience. Video content is a great way to make sure that doesn’t happen.

There are many ways to use video in education and learning

Video content doesn’t always have to be used for education. It’s a great way to teach people about who you are and what your company or website is all about. It’s a great way to let your audience get to know you better and feel like they’re a part of your team. It’s a great way to build trust and encourage people to learn more about your site and what you have to offer. You can also use video as a form of entertainment. You can have a variety show-like video or a funny video on your site. You can also have a video that’s specifically meant to entertain.

Tips from social psychology to create better learning and educational video content

Support the learning process with guiding questions in your videos along the timeline of the video.

Follow the personalization principle: People learn better from multimedia presentations when words are in conversational style rather than formal style. 

Remember cognitive load theory and limited capacity of the receiver to extra information, integration of new information has to be gradual, but using visual channels will help the retention in the long term. 

Look up Germane load if you want to understand this better. In social psychology, Germane load is the portion of the memory devoted to integrating new information, the creation and modification of schema (Sweller, van Merriënboer, & Paas, 1998). Germane load is similar to the memory usage of your computer while it's actually installing your programs. 

Conclusion

The important thing to remember is that video is an outstanding tool to support learning and education whether it be website visitors, novice learners or anyone really you wish to engage. websites make it clear just how important it is. It’s the best way to grab your visitors’ attention and keep it. It’s the best way to make sure your content stands out from the crowd and is easily distinguishable from the rest. It’s the best way to make sure your content is easily accessible to a larger audience. It’s the best way to differentiate yourself from your competition and stay competitive in the digital age.

We’re pleased to announce our biggest rework yet…

Introducing Colossyan 2.0. The newest generation of your favourite video creator.

Colossyan 2.0 isn’t just a new coat of paint. We’ve worked on every part of the machine to provide a faster, more reliable experience for you. Plus we’ve laid everything out so that it just makes more sense. Here’s what you can expect:

‍

A smoother experience

We’ve given our interface a complete redesign to make it more intuitive for users; a better menu bar with all the options so you don’t have to go searching for anything while you’re in editing mode. You’ll find that everything just flows better too.

Better, faster, stronger

We beefed up our backend to make video creation 200% faster. We wanted to make sure that generating your videos was super quick, so we got straight down to it. Enjoy improved stability so you can focus on what’s important - creating valuable video content to delight your users.

^‍Rock-solid reliability

Expect more from your favourite video creation product. We’ve combed over the bugs and fixed the code to create a more reliable experience with improved stability. Nothing wonky here!

Get a better idea of what you’re creating

We’ve fine-tuned the video creator so you can see your scenes more easily, quickly add transitions, and preview what your video will look like. You’ll also be able to see an estimate of how long your video will be. How helpful!

We’re curious to see what you think of Colossyan 2.0!

Continue creating content with Colossyan now.

Classic rendering techniques can generate photorealistic images for various complex, real-world scenarios when given high-quality scene specifications. 

They also gives us explicit editing capabilities over various elements of a scene like camera viewpoint, lighting, geometry, and materials. But a significant manual effort is required to generate high-quality scene models from images. Automating scene modeling from images is an open research problem.

Deep generative models

Deep generative models have improved quite a lot in recent years, successfully produce high-quality, photorealistic images and videos that are visually compelling. These networks can generate images or videos either from random noise or can be conditioned on certain user inputs like segmentation masks or layouts. However, they have limitations and these techniques do not yet support fine-grained control of the details of the generated scene. They also cannot always handle complex interactions between the scene objects well.

In contrast, neural rendering methods try to use the best of both approaches and enable the controllability, and synthesis of novel, high-quality images or videos. There are different types of neural rendering techniques depending on the:

• Level or type of control they support over the synthetic output 
• Types of input they require 
• Outputs they produce
• Nature of the network or architecture they use

The inputs for a typical neural rendering approach are certain scene conditions like viewpoint, layout, and lighting. A neural scene representation is then built from these inputs. Later, images can be synthesized based on novel scene properties using this representation. This encoded scene representation is not constrained by modeling approximations and can be optimized for new, high-quality images. Neural rendering techniques also incorporate ideas from classical computer graphics like input features, network architectures, and scene representations. This makes the learning task easier and helps increase the controllability of the output.

Neural Rendering

There is a type of Neural Rendering that enables novel-viewpoint synthesis as well as scene-editing in 3D (geometry deformation, removal, copy-move). It is trained for a specific scene or object. Besides ground truth color images, it requires a coarse, reconstructed and tracked 3D mesh including a texture parametrization.

Instead of the classical texture, the approach learns a neural texture, a texture that contains neural feature descriptors per surface point. A classical computer graphics rasterizer is used to sample these neural textures, and given the 3D geometry and viewpoint, resulting in a projection of the neural feature descriptors onto the image plane.

The final output image is generated from the rendered feature descriptors using a small U-Net, which is trained in conjunction with the neural texture. The learned neural feature descriptors and decoder network compensates for the coarseness of the underlying geometry, as well as for tracking errors, while the classical rendering step ensures consistent 3D image formation.

These techniques also find their applications in facial reenactment problems. The human facial texture can be encoded in the form of neural textures. Then, with the help of UV maps, this texture can be sampled. The deep U-NET-type architectures can be used to decode the neural textures. Once the neural texture is decoded, another UNET-like architecture can be employed to paint the synthetic texture on the background image.

Colossyan makes use of such technology to achieve the talking avatar generation. We have developed conditional generative neural networks that help us generate photorealistic videos according to a given audio signal. The whole pipeline involves different steps from processing the speech signal to driving the human face model, to performing neural rendering. All the above-discussed techniques play a very important role in achieving lifelike results.

Also read: AI Video Generation: What Is It and How Does It Work?

Want to make your website even more interactive? We’ve got two apps that make it easy for you. First - Colossyan, the go-to solution for anyone looking for high-quality synthetic video content. And second - VideoAsk, a web app that lets you ask your audience questions and receive answers, face-to-face.

Look how easy it is to set up. Just follow these steps to make your first interactive AI-generated video chatbot. 

How to set up your first video chatbot in just a few simple steps:

What do you need: 

• Colossyan account: With Colossyan create studio-quality videos with AI actors for your chatbot flow. Sign up quickly here.

• VideoAsk account: VideoAsk is a platform for hosting chatbot-style video widgets. here you can create your Video Ask account here. Upload your Colossyan-generated video to VideoAsk.
  

Build a chatbot the human way

Build a voice-driven chatbot with personality, powered by AI technology. Use it for all your conversational workflows. Get face-to-face with your prospects, customers, or audience through asynchronous video.

This way you can:

• Add a personal touch to your website 
• Boost your customers’ experience 
• Engage with your audience
• Get better feedback from clients 
• Answer questions when you’re not there

How to set it up

Let’s start with Colossyan-related set up: 

• First, start planning your video chatbot. You can do this on a piece of paper, or with online application like Miro. Gather the questions and answers you want to use for the video.
• Prepare the video script. You will need about 5-6 separate videos for your chatbot. Try putting together shorter videos as each clip can’t be longer than 30 seconds.
• Start creating your videos in Colossyan Creator. Some tips for best results: because VideoAsk widget shows videos in portrait mode, it’s best to select the 9:16 scene size. To do this pick an actor, go to settings, and choose the right format.  Pick or upload a background image or video, add music and once you’re happy with the final result genareta your video. Then it’s time to work with the flow in VideoAsk. 

A quick guide how to start with Colossyan Creator:

Now set up VideoAsk:

1. Go to VideoAsk and create a new VideoAsk. Select the “Upload a video” option. Now you can upload your video from Colossyan. You can add text and decide which questions to use as options. Multiple choice answers are a good way to go. 
2. Now it’s time to customize your VideoAsk. Give it a name, select the language, choose your colors, the style of the widget and you're ready to share! 

Now you can breathe life into your chatbots with personalized videos and AI actors.

AI is amazing, no doubt about it. But how does one go about implementing AI and actually use it in day to day activities? Are you a content creator for a webshop, an e-commerce business owner or manager at a larger company, or are you just looking to innovate and discover? Look no further, we got you covered!

Colossyan meets Tolstoy! Boom!

Colossyan, the is the go-to solution for everyone looking for high-quality synthetic video content and Tolstoy the one and only interactive video creator tool meets to deliver the interactive video content, easier than you ever thought possible — a match made in synthetic heaven. If a desperate friend asks you, wiping his/her tears: “How can I save money and time creating interactive videos?”  You have the answer, that’s right: Colossyan + Tolstoy. Let us make it easy on you, just follow these steps to make your first interactive AI generate video chatbot:

How to start: 

1. Set up your Tolstoy account: Tolstoy allows you to build personalized, one-on-one interactive conversations on your website, send in email campaigns, inside your SaaS platform, and much more. 
2. Sign up for Colossyan. With Colossyan you can generate synthetic, studio-quality videos with AI actors.

How to use Colossyan Creator?

1. Pick an actor: Choose an actor from our ever-growing international selection. We also offer exclusive actors and face/voice cloning.
2. Write script: Input your script for the actor to read. Our text-to-speech software supports more than 60 languages and accents.
3. Generate video: This is where the magic happens! In just a few minutes, Colossyan generates your video that is ready to watch and share.

Further guidelines follow the guidelines on this video:

How to use Colossyan and Tolstoy together: 

1. First, prepare your videos. Depending on your use case, determine how many videos you’ll want to use. To make the video more dynamic, keep the scripts as short as possible, around 30 seconds each. 

2. Go to Colossyan Creator, and generate your videos. For extra help on best practices, check out Colossyan’s Youtube for tutorials. 

3. Next, head over to Tolstoy and create a new Tolstoy. Then choose “Make my own” and "Upload a video" option. Upload your Colossyan video. You can add overlay text, and decide how people should "answer" the particular step. Click save, and you have your first "step"!

4. Create more steps in Tolstoy until you have created a personalized conversation flow. 

5. Then you're ready to share your Tolstoy. You can embed on your website, as a pop up widget, or in an email campaign. 

6. Track interactions in the Tolstoy dashboard to monitor progress and optimize the journey. 

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Now you are a total pro creating interactive videos

Even if you have never made a video in your life, now you can create a professional and interactive video in just a few minutes. You can use your interactive videos for marketing, sales, or even for training. These platforms offer you a time-saving option to engage with your audience. 

For some years now, it is undeniable that videos, in all their forms, have become quite important in almost every field. They are even more important in online marketing as an advertising tool.

The traditional process of making a video has historically presented many challenges, ranging from tedious filming schedules to long editing timelines. Fortunately, AI video eliminates many of these obstacles.

In this blog, we'll explain how this cost-effective and revolutionary AI video generator technology works.

Choosing the right AI avatar

Many tools use AI avatars as the main on-screen talent used to bring your message to life. By using AI actors, there's no longer a need to rent studios to film footage or hire human actors.

But to use an AI actor effectively, you'll want to make sure that you choose the right avatar to convey your content effectively. Tools like Colossyan offer 150+ different AI actors of all different ages, ethnicities, and professions. This way, you can choose an avatar that successfully represents your audience demographics.

Your AI avatar will essentially be the face of your content – so it's important to choose wisely. Fortunately, tools like Colossyan support the use of multiple avatars in a single scene, giving you a wider choice of avatars. This is especially useful when developing scenario-based training content.

Choosing the setting and languages

The setting of your video is paramount. After all, there's a reason why people spend large sums of money to rent fully equipped studios to shoot video content. However, with an AI video generator, there's no need for studios.

Instead, you can add background images to set your video anywhere you choose. In just a few clicks, your AI avatar can go from a beach scene to a busy cityscape. No need to pick up a camera.

In addition to determining where your video is set, it's also important to decide what languages you want it to be in. Traditionally, you'd need to reshoot your footage for each language variant you needed, but now with AI video, your content can be translated to 100+ languages in just a few clicks. This allows you to localize your content for different audiences all over the world at no extra cost.

Prepare your script and desired effects in the video

Now that the stage is set and the actor is chosen, it's time to get down to the content. What exactly do you want your AI avatars to say?

Most AI-based videos that use avatars rely on text to speech, meaning you'll input a video script, and your avatar will create a narrative voiceover in return. AI script assistant tools, as well as document to video and prompt to video workflows can help make the scriptwriting process more painless.

Colossyan is a great example of a tool with these features. Additionally, Colossyan's video editing interface is extremely user friendly, meaning you can create professional-grade video content with no additional skills or experience.

The ease of use of whichever video generator tool you decide to use is extremely important, as this will make it easier to add additional elements like images and music that can really spruce up your content.

Here's a bit more about Colossyan:

Leveraging an AI video generator can not only save you time and money, but it can also make your content more engaging.

Don't believe us? Come see for yourself and try Colossyan for free.