Runway vs Synthesia

Runway and Synthesia are both AI services for multimedia content generation. They allow users to create videos without knowledge of video editing and even without purchasing equipment or organizing a shoot. Both companies have developed their own neural network models, trained on large datasets and offer automation features that reduce the labor costs of routine recording, editing, narration and so on. Both companies are committed to copyright compliance and content security.

But Runway (founded in 2018) is an American service for generating artistic videos from text prompts or graphic templates (video-to-video, image-to-video). The company uses diffusion models, visual transformers, temporal consistency methods (to ensure character/environment consistency across scenes). The service also offers video editing tools: object removal, background changes, stylization, scene appearance management, cropping and more. Runway is aimed at artists, visual content creators and business users (marketers). The service provides an API for business and a mobile app for a general audience.

Synthesia (2017) is a British platform that specializes in generating "talking head" videos - with avatars reading text. Such videos are used for news, corporate training, presentations and commercials. The service supports multiple languages ​​and voices; it generates speech and facial expressions using algorithms, lip-syncs and can even create digital avatars based on real people (after their consent of course). Synthesia is also developing an AI Video Assistant, which can convert text documents into video, helping automate scripting and scene layout. The service is used by many Fortune 100 companies.