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Synthetic media is much more than just deep fakes – and quite seperate to digital humans. Here are some creative uses of the tech in 2026.
Synthetic media has become synonymous with the aspects of manipulation, particularly in deep fakes (and boy, will we come on to deep fakes). That has largely been down to how the technology has hit the public consciousness, driven by concerns over fake news and the genuine concern that people may use it to manipulate our perceptions of reality.
When we first approached this topic, deep fakes were in their infancy – although their usage was roughly doubling ever six months, according to Sensity research. Now, in 2026, synthetic media is not niche. AI video has exploded, and the world wrestles with understanding whether we can trust what our eyes and ears tell us while we're online.
It's not all negative, either. Synthetic media as a category and array of technologies is much more than just deep fakes. There are interesting, creative applications of synthetic media in popular culture and commercial settings.
There’s also an interesting intersection between synthetic media and digital humans, all of which we’ll unpack below.
Synthetic media is any content that AI creates or alters. That includes text, images, audio, video, music, and 3D assets.
The category is broad, but six main types show up in business today:
In other words, it’s media that is produced by technology. For this reason, you might also hear synthetic media called “AI-generated media” or "generative media".
The field is ever expanding as synthetic media companies aim to disrupt more and more parts of traditional media, making new things easier to create.
For example, while recording a video featuring Tom Cruise can be an expensive and time consuming project, it’s now possible to create a deep-fake version of the actor with almost unnerving accuracy.
Which brings us on to perhaps the most popular and polarizing form of synthetic media today.
No conversation about synthetic media can be made without including deep fakes – undoubtedly the most famous, infamous, and synonymous form of synthetic media. A deepfake is a subset of synthetic media. What makes it a deepfake is that it imitates a real, identifiable person.
Deep fakes (a portmanteau of the phrases “deep learning” and “fake”) first emerged in late 2017, powered by deep-learning technology called generative adversarial networks (GANs). Today, they may be created by other emerging tech, like Diffusion Models or Variational Autoencoders (VAEs).
The technology allows deep-fake practitioners to quickly and easily create media that manipulates what we see and hear.
Clearly the nature of the technology poses many ethical concerns, from potential breaches of image rights to how it can be used to spread fake news or commit fraud. In the years since deep fakes emerged, they’ve been used to create celebrity versions of pornography without consent, spread fake news by making influential people say and do things they didn’t actually say or do, and even rewrite history.
On the more lighthearted side, deep fakes have been used to reunite Tupac and Snoop Dogg in a 2020 music video, make celebrity-endorsed adverts during social isolation, and create memes – so many memes.
Meanwhile, the quality deep fakes can range from the impressive to the downright laughable. For instance, the footage (above) of a deep-fake Tom Cruise makes you think twice about whether or not it’s actually real; while anyone who has seen a glitchy AI avatar will tell you exactly how the Uncanny Valley feels.
Back in 2021, we opined that it's clear how "the quality of a deep fake depends on the amount of time someone can spend cleaning it up. That won’t always be the case." And that's true; today, that 'cleaning up' from AI slop is a trivial job at best, requiring a few tokens and five minutes of time. Deep fakes can be created in a matter of seconds – even though their impact can last a lifetime.
Since we last touched upon this topic, legislation around using deepfakes has caught up with the speed of change... well, somewhat. The EU now has a legal definition of a deepfake under Article 3(60) of the EU AI Act. It says a deepfake is AI-generated or manipulated image, audio, or video that resembles real people, places, objects, or events closely enough to look authentic.
Note what's missing from that definition: intent. Content can be a deepfake under EU law even if nobody meant to deceive anyone.
Why has this legislation come to pass? Well, the impact of deepfakes is measurable, and it's gotten a lot bigger in recent times:
A digital human is conversational AI with a face and a body. It listens, thinks, and responds live, in a two-way conversation.
So are digital humans just another form of synthetic media? The short answer is no, though the two definitely overlap. Digital humans are not strictly synthetic media, though the two concepts overlap.
True synthetic media—like a deepfake video or an AI-generated image—is hallucinated entirely by an algorithm. A digital human, on the other hand, is crafted by people. Built by 3D modelers, riggers, and animators using CGI tools like Unreal Engine, a digital human is much closer to a high-end video game character than an AI generation.
The AI-generated voice it speaks with and the words it formulates using an LLM—those are the synthetic media components.
UneeQ digital humans are built as original CGI characters, not generated from footage of real people. We've written before about why we don't chase photorealism. These digital humans are driven by Synanim™ for their animation and behavior, and LLM orchestration for conversation, both part of the Digital Human OS platform.
Digital humans use synthetic media, instead of being synthetic media.
For instance, our Digital Albert Einstein used Aflorithmic’s tech to first clone the voice of Albert Einstein and then make it possible for him to say virtually anything through AI voice cloning. UneeQ can also use any other AI voice provider or LLM to generate the words spoken in conversation.
Brands are using synthetic media today in a number of ways. However, due to the current risks of handing creative control over to AI (which cannot be ethical by nature) many of the safest consumer-facing applications still involve some form of human oversight.
For instance, our Digital Einstein experience was done in partnership with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who manage the rights of the Nobel Prize winner on behalf of his estate.
When it came to Sophie, our digital human who derives her conversational abilities from GPT-3, we established certain guardrails regarding what she could and wouldn’t talk about, with the help of the team at OpenAI. You can learn more about how we did so in this article, should it help you mitigate your own synthetic media challenges.
Similarly, the commercial use of deep fakes specifically have been focused on advertising and film, where the final output can be tightly controlled.
Brands like ESPN have brought legendary NFL rivals Al Davis and Pete Rozelle back to audiences using deep fake technology that allowed the faces of the deceased pair to animate without using traditional CGI.
Meanwhile, Hulu overcame social isolation restrictions to create an advertisement starring NBA player Damian Lillard, Canadian hockey player Sidney Crosby and WNBA player Skylar Diggins-Smith – all as deep fakes.
So while digital humans don't use deepfake technologies, instead using CGI time-tested by the video game and movie industries for decades, we are experienced in telling the difference between real and fake.
So much so, our CTO Tyler was a guest on Fox during the 2024 election to help give his top tips on how to spot a deepfake.
Check it out below:
With everyone from the influencer industry to traditional advertising, film, and TV getting involved, synthetic media will surely continue its push into the mainstream. But trust issues abound. Deciding when to rely on deep-fake technologies and when to focus on more trusted tools like CGI is an increasingly important consideration.
As we like to say, experience is everything. How these synthetic media technologies are used will determine whether or not they provide the best experience to users. That certainly applies when creating a digital human.
If you’d like to see what’s possible today with synthesized voice and AI conversation, you can speak to our Sophie on our website, try an AI roleplay on Immersive Training Platform, or book some time to talk to our team.
