It’s hard to ignore the growing Deepfake phenomenon of the past few years, from memes to GIFs, and other viral face swap videos filling your feed. However, the comical technology also offers a more commercial use, just like Israeli AI company Hour One’s product. The Israeli company develops a system made to create synthetic person-like characters that can say whatever comes to mind. Hour One announced the closing of a $5 million Seed round led by Galaxy EOS VC Fund. Kindred Ventures, Remagine Ventures, and Amaranthine.

Anyone can become a synthetic character

The company’s system can take any person and turn them into what the company calls a “synthetic character”. After scanning, you can dictate the character to do whatever you want (all in good taste, of course) in the cloud environment. The function also allows you to immediately create videos with the “synthetic character” reading from a prompter as if it was real. If you don’t have the time to make your own, you can also choose from over 100 pre-made characters that come with the system.

Hour One’s system provides a unique solution for our new COVID based reality. If lockdown and regulations make it hard to get a cast and crew together for a video shoot, the system can substitute the real thing with a professional-looking video, without actors being required to remember lines or shoot multiple takes. The company is already heavily involved with E-commerce companies, education, automotive, communications, and more. So, don’t be surprised if soon “Jeff, from customer service” gets a whole working body and persona to keep you on hold. In fact, it’s possible to integrate the service into your organization’s system, so that each product page on your website provides a guided tour with a full detailed explanation for every product.

Hour One was founded in 2019 by CEO Oren Aharon and CTO Lior Hakim. The company currently employs a team of 10 people, who mostly work out of the company’s Israel-based offices.