The main question for many leaders today is how to make the best use of Artificial Intelligence. AI presents an unparalleled opportunity to elevate what we can achieve, not by replacing us, but by enhancing our capabilities. We are at a crossroads, where the decisions we make as leaders today will determine what companies will thrive in the next decades to come. We need to ask ourselves how we can reinvent ourselves, how we work, and our entire business with the help of AI.
Storyals were early adopters of AI
At Storyals, AI was adopted early, and our AI Policy states that it should be used to augment rather than replace or deceive. Our strategy includes integrating AI into three key core areas of our business: media production, product offerings, and internal processes. In this article, we wanted to share some insights and learnings from our journey this far.
Using AI in our media production
At Storyals, we have always been extremely proud of our high-quality video production. We create our learning videos entirely from scratch, handling everything from ideation and storyboarding to recording, screen captures, animations and post-production editing.
AI capabilities are seamlessly making their way into the video production tools used by our media production team making their work less mundane. Now, they can use AI to remove unwanted “ums” or “hmms” , replace or remove unwanted props in images, and extend video footages.
In January this year, we ventured on the journey of exploring AI-generated human actors. There are multiple vendors in the market that offer this type of service, Colossyan, Synthesia to name a few. We created an AI-generated “digital twin” of Storyals CEO Ulrika Hedlund who is the featured instructor in our on-demand courses. We wanted to see how we could leverage a Digital Twin of her to make more tailored video content, without having to record everything in the studio.
The experiences here have been mixed. Even though the out-of-the-box AI actors are quite realistic, the custom avatar we created of Ulrika Hedlund is not yet at a level that we feel comfortable with.
For now, we are experimenting with different use cases and scenarios for these AI actors and Ulrika’s digital twin. For those of you who are Storyals customers, you will see an AI-generated actor in our latest story-based tutorial showing Microsoft 365 Copilot in Teams.
Something new, that we are happy to share is that thanks to the use of AI we can now offer a video-based version of our monthly blog. This way, in addition to just reading our blog, our followers can also listen or watch as our AI-generated actors have a deep-dive conversation about our blog.
Using AI in our product offerings
For quite some time, we have been using AI-supported translation, subtitle and voice-over services by a provider called Vidby. Using their AI-based services we can clone Ulrika’s voice and have her speak in numerous languages to support a worldwide audience.
As we look to the future, our focus on product development is centered around creating more personalized learning experiences. The digital literacy varies widely among individuals, and by having a better understanding of each individual’s competence in using Microsoft 365 we can better tailor the digital upskilling experience. We are now exploring how we can build intelligent agents that guide users to the learning content they need and encourage them to allocate time for their development. Our goal is to foster an environment where continuous learning is not just encouraged but seamlessly integrated into the user's experience.
Internal Work Processes
Reinventing our internal work processes has been significantly bolstered by the introduction of Microsoft 365 Copilot. Although mastering this functionality is a continuous marathon, the feedback from our team has been overwhelmingly positive. AI tools like Copilot are enhancing our efficiency in various areas, from customer meetings and follow-ups to communications and marketing. The next step for us is to explore how we can make better use of agents to support new joiners, better share our knowledge and automate some of our repetitive tasks.
Conclusion
In conclusion, reinventing ourselves as a company with the help of AI is not about replacing our human ingenuity but about amplifying what we can do. We are just in the beginning of this journey and feedback and close dialog with our customers is key. As always, we value your candid feedback and are open to exploring alternative paths that we might not have thought about!