5. Discussion

This study contributes a new finding to our understanding of entrepreneurial pitching strategy. That is, this study demonstrates that the current level of AI-generated avatar technology can be a competitively and equitably viable video spokesperson consideration for entrepreneurs. This is a valuable revelation, given the importance of video for entrepreneurial outreach like on crowdfunding platforms (Carradini & Fleischmann, 2023; Courtney et al., 2017; Johan & Zhang, 2020; X. Li et al., 2016; Mollick, 2014). This study also thus adds to our understanding of digital oratory’s evolution, particularly as it relates to the subgenre of entrepreneurial digital oratory.
At a fundamental level, this study confirms the implicitly and explicitly held understanding of digital oratory – that delivery and narrator persona, even in the digital context, matter even beyond the technical or logical argumentative content. As research has indicated prior to this study and then confirmed through this study’s variables, the entrepreneurial spokesperson can absolutely have an impact on the success or failure of a pitch. This study advances our general understanding that in digital oratory, the orator matters, and places and confirming that understanding squarely within a commercial context. The prudent entrepreneur, then, would ensure that the nonverbal delivery in their digital oratory-based proposal is performed in such a way that it serves as a valuable vehicle for gaining engagement, buy-in, and goodwill. What that data here suggests is that AI-generated avatars are now worthy of consideration for the entrepreneur seeking to meet those goals.
Because of the viability of avatars demonstrated here, our understanding of digital oratory as a genre of speaking, for private, public, and commercial purposes, must now include a further complication – awareness that this form of “embodied” communication can now effectively be organic or synthetic. While extensive exploration have confirmed the limitations synthetic characters have due to the uncanny valley phenomenon (Gray & Wegner, 2012; MacDorman & Entezari, 2015; Tinwell et al., 2013; Tondu, 2015), this new era of avatars appear to have moved beyond that limiting feature for the majority of respondents.
The increased effectiveness of synthetic speakers may have been achieved by the type of avatars used in this system, fashioned off from live human video models instead of pure computer-generated animation. That situates the avatar much closer already to the expected narrators in the broader, accepted digital oratory genre. The AI-powered dynamism coded into the avatar’s seemingly authentic delivery style then allows it to be believable for the majority of viewers, especially those unaware of the backend reality. That synthetic delivery prowess is what appears to allow this class of synthetic spokespersons to be equally as persuasively successful. This understanding is consistent with the existing literature on the impact of persona and delivery in entrepreneurial pitch success (Allison et al., 2022; Davis et al., 2017; Jiang et al., 2019; Y. Li et al., 2021).
Of course, the results here to not offer a blanket endorsement of avatars as human spokesperson replacements. Quite the opposite. The very design of the experiment, controlling the setting and gestures of the live actors to match the digital puppets’ limited options, points to the freedom and flexibility that organic human actors provide. However, the time and cost saving, along with the professional aesthetic so easily achieved, will have to factor against those creative freedoms. With the avatar programs also allowing users to upload video of themselves to create their own bespoke custom avatars, even the positive self-promotion tactics previously found valuable (Korzynski et al., 2021) are an option now in the digital context, further complicating the entrepreneur’s decision calculus.
Entrepreneurs considering an avatar speaking for their endeavor should also carefully weigh the remaining risks of the uncanny valley, even if just caused by poor execution in this evolving technology. When the synthetic nature of the digital spokesperson was identified, the respondent ratings were less positive. In the case where the viewership was expected to be skeptical, when the creator was not familiar with the technology, or when there was a small sample size of viewers, the risks of a diminished score may rise beyond the liking of an entrepreneur.
This is not to say that the risks of avatar-awareness negate the value of the AI avatars. The data here suggests otherwise quite directly as well. Not only is the fake highly effective, with most respondents not identifying the synthetic avatar as such, the overall average was equally as high, regardless of which video type was viewed. Thus, for an entrepreneur or other persuasively minded creator, as more and more viewers see their pitch, the likelihood increases that they too will not have anomalous negative reactions, but instead will also produce the same equivalent results. In the context of crowdfunding, for example, when the viewership can be in the tens of thousands to even millions, the data here suggest that there is no statistical risk in using an AI avatar. Even further, for those wishing to reduce risks caused by ethnic or gender inequalities in entrepreneurship(Chang & Xu, 2023), the synthetic spokesperson of a varying demographic may be an appealing, even if ethically complicated, consideration.
Even further, because the delivery of the avatar is already highly effective at fooling more than half of viewers, and because significant financial investments and user data is being collected in massive quantities, the coding needed to further refine the animation is almost guaranteed to be provided to the companies creating this software, like Synthesia and its competitors. This all but guarantees that the risks directly associated with identifiability in the avatar will continue to decrease.
It should also be noted that this study was also based on a single context and single script. The skilled pitch writer has many other alternative ways of creating value or even additional risk even with a constrained use of the avatars. As the landscape of digital oratory undergoes its current seismic shifts, the conventions of the genre will thus change as new rhetorical and videographic approaches are tested and normed. For example, it may or may not be advantageous to transparently admit that the spokesperson is an AI avatar. Future studies, as well as industry use-case exemplars, will help scholars and practitioners better understand how these new contextual best practices develop.