How to Clone Yourself with AI | HeyGen AI Review
Let me show you how easily you can clone yourself already!
Did you know you can create a perfect AI clone of yourself in minutes? It talks naturally and fluently in any language.
You can do it all with HeyGen AI.
Let me show you how it works and give you my thoughts of it...
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How to Create an AI Clone with HeyGen
To create an AI clone of yourself, you need to use a platform called HeyGen. As far as I know, they’re right now the best at it.
HeyGen uses artificial intelligence to generate videos out of thin air.
The most popular feature is the AI cloning tool that creates a perfect clone of yourself—that can talk in any language with your voice.
Besides, it has ready-made AI voice actors and even cartoon avatars you can use in your presentations.
Key Features
If you want to jump to creating your first AI clone, skip to the next section. But if you’re more interested in HeyGen, here are some of the key features of the platform.
Let’s take a quick look at the standout features of HeyGen:
- AI-Powered Video Creation: HeyGen turns text into interactive videos from scratch.
- Customizable AI Avatars: HeyGen provides over 100 realistic avatars that users can customize. This creates videos with avatars that best represent you. And you can create an AI avatar clone of yourself!
- Multi-Language Support: It supports video creation in over 40 languages with more than 300 voices, making it a powerful tool for global marketing strategies and reaching a wider audience with localized content. You can make yourself speak any language!
- Pre-Built Templates: HeyGen offers pre-built templates suitable for various industries and purposes, such as marketing videos, training tutorials, and social media content.
- User-Friendly Interface: The platform is intuitive and easy to navigate, even for users without video editing experience.
- LLM Integration: HeyGen integrates with ChatGPT for scriptwriting assistance, making it easy to create the perfect script for your videos.
Plus a lot more.
How to Clone Yourself with AI
Let me show you how to create a clone of yourself using HeyGen AI.
Feel free to sign up if you want to follow along. If you don’t just read the post and you’ll get a pretty good idea.
So, it all starts from their homepage. Just sign up for free and start using the product.
First, you’re going to see an AI speaking—which by the way is so impressive that you’d never be able to guess it’s AI without knowing.
You can skip this introduction if you want to.
Then it’s time to quickly answer the questions that the tool wants to know about you.
Then, it’s time to start creating. I could show all the bells and whistles of the platform, but I bet you’re here for one reason: To create an AI clone of yourself.
So let me show you exactly how you can do it and what are my thoughts about it.
To create an AI clone, head over to the main dashboard (where you land automatically after signing up). Then click on “Create Instant Avatar:”
Unfortunately, at the time of writing, there’s no free trial so you need to subscribe to a paid plan. But you can request a refund later if you’re not happy.
All right, after you’ve subscribed, you’re going to see the instructions on how to create an AI avatar clone of yourself.
Make sure to watch the instructions.
In short, you need to film 2–5 minutes of yourself talking. In the short clip you send, you should be:
- In a good lighting
- In a quiet space
- As natural as you can
- Making gestures below your chest
- Have a clear pause between sentences
- Use a high-res camera (I did it with my iPhone)
- Look directly into the camera
Once you’ve filmed the clip and sent it to HeyGen AI, it will take a while for the AI to generate a clone of yourself.
For me, this took about 5–10 minutes. But you don’t have to sit there and wait because they will send you an email once the AI clone is ready.
Once the avatar is ready, you can check it out. Here’s mine:
You can click on the avatar to see a short greeting that it makes:
At this point, I was like “WOW”. It felt so realistic. If it’s not someone very close to me, they would never be able to tell it’s AI… Cool and scary at the same time.
But now, it’s time to start using the AI clone.
To do this, head over to the main view of HeyGen, and click on “Create with AI Studio.”
There are two main things you have to do here.
Firstly, you should add a script from the left-hand side. You can either generate a script with AI or copy-paste something you’ve created.
But also, don’t forget to include your avatar to read the script. Choose the “Avatar” on the left-hand side, and click on your avatar to add it to the editor. Feel free to zoom in and out to resize.
One thing to keep in mind is that you cannot preview your video before the AI has rendered it. So even though there is a preview button, it will only read the text out loud with your voice.
Also, the video creation is quite an expensive process, so just make sure everything is correct. In other words, make sure that:
- Your AI avatar is visible in the editor and expands across the whole script duration.
- Your voice clone is activated. You can choose your voice by clicking the avatar and choosing the right voice. You can also change the voice of someone else while keeping your avatar in the scene.
- Also, make sure the script is right and reads out nicely. You can change the language if you want to!
Then it’s time to hit the “Submit” button.
Similar to creating the avatar, this process takes a while as HeyGen AI does its magic.¨
You can do something else meanwhile. HeyGen will notify you once the AI-generated video is ready.
Once the video is ready, you can watch it from the editor or download it and watch it on your device.
If you want to see how realistic those videos end up being, make sure to watch mine. I compare my real self with my AI clone at the beginning of the video.
I think those AI clones are amazing. Especially with the fact that it makes me speak in different languages is epic!
However, the process took a while. It took at least 45 minutes from signing up to seeing my first videos. Also, the technology is still a bit expensive. In my plan, it would cost $30 to make about 5–10 minutes of video.
Pros
- Very realistic AI. The AI videos are super realistic and the speech looks natural and flows smoothly. The gestures are there too!
- AI cloning is scary good. The AI clone that you can create for yourself is epic. It looks indistinguishable from you (except for yourself and perhaps your closest people.)
- You can try the tool for free, except for the AI clone.
- This tool hasn’t been littered with all the useless features to make it look more impressive. Instead, it’s straight to the point with a simple editor, voice actors, and AI avatars.
- The video tool has good guidelines and simple instructions that are easy to follow.
Cons
- Very expensive. A 30-second AI clone video of myself cost about $2. If I wanted to do a 10-minute video, that would be $40, which is way too much.
- Slow. The AI generator is impressive but also slow. Creating a 60-second clip took 5–10 minutes.
- Impractical for my content pipeline. I mean, the AI works perfectly, but the issue is that it’s slow and costly. I’d much rather talk in front of a camera for 10 minutes rather than have to pay $40 for it and wait for an hour or two!
- No free AI clone trial. At the time of writing, the technology is so expensive, that HeyGen can’t give a free trial on the AI cloning feature.
Pricing
- Free: $0
- Creator: $24/mo
- Team: $120/mo
- Enterprise: Contact sales
To Take Home
I love HeyGen. I must admit that even though I reviewed a lot of AI tools, I didn’t know that the AI avatar technology had taken this massive leap in the past year or so.
The last time I used these tools they weren’t impressive at all. But this one was. I sent the clips to my friends and family and they couldn’t believe their eyes either.
That being said, make sure to give it a try. The language feature was pretty epic. I spoke fluent Spanish all of a sudden…
That being said, I think this doesn’t speed up my content creation because it’s actually slow. To create a 10-minute talking head video, I’d need to spend hours and $20-$40. For me, it’s much quicker to just film it in 10 minutes for free!
This also depends on the use case. If you want to automate some presentations and videos while keeping them realistic, then it’s worth the wait and price.
