AI Governance Practices
Overview
Synthesia is committed to the responsible, transparent, and secure development of artificial intelligence technologies as part of its Services (herein referred to as “ AI Components”). This page outlines Synthesia’s approach to AI governance and compliance, structured around its guiding principles and key areas of impact. Synthesia aligns its practices with international standards, such as ISO/IEC 42001:2023, to help ensure that its AI Components are trustworthy, compliant, and suitable for the needs of its customers and society at large.
These policies and practices may change as the Services and industry evolve, so please check back regularly for updates.
Guiding Principles
Responsible Innovation
Synthesia is guided by a framework of responsible artificial intelligence innovation whereby it adheres to its founding principles of Consent, Control and Collaboration throughout its AI supply chain. This means Synthesia requires that each person consent before their voice or likeness is cloned for an avatar, whether it’s for a Stock Avatar available to all customers, or a Custom Avatar (e.g., Personal Avatar) that is created by and on behalf of a specific customer. Synthesia’s platform and policies are also integrated with a trust and safety layer that is designed to help prevent the generation and distribution of harmful content. This includes a prescriptive Acceptable Use Policy that is supported by a dedicated Trust and Safety Team and further operationalized by automated and manual verification and content moderation tools and filters. And lastly, Synthesia partners with regulatory bodies, media organizations, and research institutions to develop best practices and educate its customers and the industry on the responsible use of AI.
Rights of Customers
Synthesia is committed to respecting the rights of organizations and businesses that use its Services, by communicating transparently and empowering them with choice. The Services, and Synthesia’s related practices, incorporate measures designed to respect their intellectual property rights, protect their data, and maintain confidentiality. As further described below in the section titled ‘Governing Agreements,’ Customers own the content they generate using the Services, and are not responsible for Synthesia’s separate R&D and development decisions. Synthesia handles customer data in accordance with its customers’ written instructions while adhering to rigorous security and confidentiality safeguards and standards.
Rights of Individuals
Synthesia is deeply committed to upholding the rights of individuals and to protect the public from harmful content and misuse of AI technologies. Synthesia’s Acceptable Use Policy prohibits the use of Services for activities that infringe on individual rights, such as creating defamatory, inciteful, abusive, or discriminatory content. Synthesia enforces these restrictions to help ensure that the AI Components are used responsibly, aligning with the broader goal of safeguarding privacy, promoting freedom of expression within ethical bounds, and preventing discrimination. Furthermore, Synthesia’s Content Integrity Policy offers individuals a streamlined process to report copyright and privacy concerns regarding content generated by users.
Key Areas of Impact
Accountability & Explainability
Synthesia and its customers have a shared responsibility to prevent abuse and mitigate harm. Synthesia integrates a structured approach to defining roles and reinforcing responsibilities along the entire AI supply chain, beginning with R&D and model creation and extending through to customer deployment.
Roles under Regulations
Synthesia’s role and responsibilities, as well as those of its customers, shift based on the stage of the AI supply chain and the applicable legal framework. When creating and pre-training AI Components, Synthesia serves as the “controller” under privacy frameworks like GDPR and the UK GDPR, and when making these components available to customers as part of the Services, it serves as a “provider” under AI frameworks like the EU AI Act. However, once customers choose to use the Services, they take on the role of “deployer” under the EU AI Act, and under privacy law, they assume the responsibilities of the controller (as they determine the purposes and means of processing), while Synthesia transitions to the role of “processor” (as it processes the data on behalf of the customer). To the best of Synthesia’s knowledge, its AI Components, when used as intended and in accordance with the Acceptable Use Policy, are not classified as High-Risk AI Systems under the EU AI Act.
Customer Choice
The Services are intended for use by businesses of all sizes, across diverse industries and geographies. As a processor and provider of the Services, Synthesia offers features and controls to help customers meet their unique compliance obligations, however, it is ultimately the customers' responsibility to deploy and use the Services in accordance with the laws that apply to them. For instance, paying customers can elect to use Synthesia’s script or editor features to embed audio or visual markers in their videos for transparency purposes under the EU AI Act, though all freemium videos already include watermarks by default.
Internal Governance & Policies
Synthesia’s internal governance and policies are designed to ensure that roles and responsibilities are defined and enforced for AI Component development and monitoring. The following are examples of roles designed to oversee AI-related decisions and their impacts:
- AI Governance Council: This committee is responsible for reviewing AI-related decisions, particularly those that may have ethical implications.
- Data Protection Officer: This role involves overseeing data management practices, including ensuring data quality, provenance, and compliance with data protection regulations.
- Security & Compliance Teams: These individuals help ensure that the AI Components are secure and comply with relevant regulations.
- Engineering and Research Leads: Responsible for the design and development of AI Components.
- Customer Support Liaison: This role is dedicated to managing customer interactions related to AI Components.
Governing Agreements
Synthesia’s governing agreements with its customers are designed to promote accountability by allocating the rights, responsibilities and remedies of a party based upon their relative ability to exercise control and influence over the means and purposes of processing.
Explainability
Synthesia is committed to making its AI Components understandable and explainable to customers and their users. The inherent transparency of the Services ensures that discrepancies between expected and actual outputs are immediately apparent.
Fairness & Transparency
Synthesia implements bias mitigation strategies at multiple stages of the AI lifecycle, from performance data collection to model development that are designed to avoid discrimination based on race, gender, age, and other protected characteristics. Regular audits and bias assessments are conducted to monitor and correct emerging biases.
Inclusive Sourcing
Synthesia prioritizes inclusive sourcing, production and design principles.
Transparency-by-Design
Transparency is inherent to the Services given their nature. Customers can generate a video and assess the outputs.
Training, Data and Provenance
Synthesia specializes in developing AI Components that generate photorealistic performances of avatars. Synthesia does not develop or offer standalone or general-purpose AI models.
No Customer Data
Synthesia does not use Customer Data to pre-train its AI Components.
Documented Practices
Synthesia establishes and maintains a documented process for tracking the origin and history of performance data used to develop its AI Components.
Security and Privacy
Synthesia employs appropriate data protection and privacy measures designed to ensure that its AI Components are developed in a privacy-centric and compliant manner.
Safety and Health
Synthesia recognizes the potential impact of AI Components on the physical and mental well-being of individuals and designs its AI Components with safety as a primary concern.
Red Teaming
Synthesia regularly tests its trust and safety measures using independent experts.
Ethical Impact Assessments
Synthesia’s AI development process includes comprehensive ethical impact assessments.
Financial and Economic Impact
Synthesia assesses the economic impact of its AI Components on individuals and groups and implements moderation processes designed to prevent financial harm by way of impersonation, fraud or misinformation campaigns.
Accessibility
Synthesia is committed to making its AI Components and Services accessible, regardless of ability.
Ongoing Improvements & Audits
Synthesia is committed to the continuous monitoring and improvement of its AI Components. It regularly monitors AI performance, incorporates customer feedback, and adapts to new developments in AI technology and regulation.