How Cox Communications trained 16,500 employees on responsible AI

The Challenge

With 16,500 employees and the operational complexity of a major infrastructure provider, keeping Cox Communications’ workforce informed and trained is both essential and logistically demanding.

Byron, Senior Manager of Learning and Development at Cox Communications, doesn't lack skill on his team. He and his designers have the video production talent many L&D teams only wish for. But traditional video production, even when done well, is slow: script review cycles, recording sessions, retakes, manual video cuts, slide exports, and green screen work — all for a team juggling competing priorities. For a single module, that process consumed hours of production time. 

The other problem was fragility. When a field name changed, every affected video had to be re-recorded from scratch.

When Cox's Responsible AI team came to Byron with an ambitious ask — a full training series to upskill and prepare 16,500 employees on the responsible use of AI — the timeline was tight, the content was new, and the stakes were high. 

The Solution

Byron's team had been using Synthesia for three to four years, evolving through successive generations of avatars and features. For this project, choosing Synthesia to deliver the training  was deliberate — and it carried a certain logic that wasn't lost on anyone in the room.

"Using AI to talk about AI was brilliant, because people go: 'wow, this is an AI course and it's AI talking to you.' It elevated the impact." — Byron Knowlton, Senior Manager, Learning & Development, Cox Communications

The Responsible AI series used a Synthesia avatar as its narrator and host — a consistent face and voice across all six videos that gave the series a unified identity. Rapid prototyping meant stakeholders could review near-final content in real time, sitting alongside the designers to give feedback without waiting for a render cycle.

The feature that changed the production workflow most was the script to video function. Byron's team and stakeholders had a strong sense of what the scripting should cover; Synthesia took that script and broke it into a scene-by-scene structure automatically.

"Laying out the video flow is the hardest part. With Synthesia, you drop the script in, it lays out all the scenes, and you go from there." — Byron Knowlton, Senior Manager, Learning & Development, Cox Communications

With narration, B-roll, and additional assets all available in one platform — including integrated stock libraries — the team didn't have to shuffle between tools to build a complete video. Everything was in the same place. That alone compressed the production cycle significantly.

Beyond the Responsible AI series, the team has also leaned on Synthesia for annual compliance training, producing content in three languages — English, French, and Spanish — without outsourcing translation to external vendors. The accuracy was striking: across a 30-minute translated lesson, only two words needed updating. 

The Results

• 95% reduction in speed to market — content that previously took weeks to produce can now be turned around in a day
• 16,500 employees reached through company-wide training 
• Voiceover costs eliminated — no external voiceover artists required; revoicing or re-scripting happens in-platform
• 3 languages — annual compliance training translated into English, French, and Spanish
• Adoption spreading across lines of business — teams are now coming to Byron's group to build role-based AI training for their specific functions

For Byron, the most meaningful signal was simpler: stakeholders who had given his team a near-impossible ask walked away happy. The Responsible AI team's VP was pleased enough with the content to feature the series on Cox's main internal page. 

"When we have big video projects, the biggest pressure is getting the content right. Synthesia is a fantastic tool to help you get it right." — Byron Knowlton, Senior Manager, Learning & Development, Cox Communications