Can an AI deliver a keynote? We’re putting it to the test at ContentEd
What happens when you push the boundaries of AI from helpful assistant to headline speaker? That’s exactly what we’re exploring at this year’s ContentEd conference - by putting our very own custom-trained GPT, Eddie, on the main stage.
Yes, really. Eddie (they/them), our virtual event assistant, isn’t just handling logistics. They’re writing and delivering a keynote.
So, who is Eddie?
Eddie is a bespoke GPT we’ve trained specifically for ContentEd. We’ve trained them to be a friendly and efficient virtual assistant that helps the event team with event planning and operations. So, Eddie helps with things like:
Creating the event schedule (our human brains haven’t coped well with trying to map out a 48-hour rolling schedule that will serve three different core “regions” around the world for the conference to rotate between, so Eddie is doing it for us).
Reformatting conference session titles and descriptions so that they’re consistent in style, tone and length. Every speaker submits a proposal in a different style, tone and length. Usually, it’s a manual (human) job for us to bring consistency to those descriptions. This year, Eddie did it for us.
Creating conference marketing materials and content, helping with things like creating social media content and e-newsletters for us to promote the conference.
We’re also exploring whether Eddie can provide a delegate enquiry service or handle delegate enquiries within the event itself. And we have many more tasks that we want to test out on Eddie as the conference approaches.
We then began thinking about including a session on the conference lineup about using AI assistants to help create great event experiences and content. But we didn’t want Eddie to just sit on the sidelines. We started asking ourselves: how far can you go with AI in creating an entire event experience? Could we use generative tools not just to support, but to lead a session? And if so - what would that look like?
That’s when the idea of the Eddie keynote was born.
Designing an AI-led keynote - live on stage
This isn't just a session about AI. It’s a keynote by AI. With human help behind the scenes, of course.
Image shows a screen grab from the promo page on the ContentEd website for Eddie’s keynote talk.
Here’s what we’re experimenting with, including what we’ve already done and what we’re in progress with:
First we created a custom GPT to act as our event assistant. We trained it on the specifics of the ContentEd conference, but we also wanted it to have a personality and so “Eddie” (ContentEd - see what we did there?) was born (or programmed!)
We then used ChatGPT to create an image for Eddie. We knew that we wanted Eddie to be non-binary, fairly youthful, professional but a little bit edgy and fun.
Eddie designed their own talk: With a bit of prompting from us, Eddie outlined a session concept and structure that explores how AI can be used to elevate event experiences.
Script development and slide design: Eddie will write the session script and help create the slide deck. We’ll use AI tools as far as we can go - but keep a human eye on accuracy, consistency and polish.
A video avatar brought to life with HeyGen: After testing tools provided by Adobe, Synthesia and others, HeyGen is our current frontrunner for creating Eddie’s on-screen presence. We’re using their Photo-to-Video with Avatar IV feature, although we’re navigating current limitations, like 30-second video chunks.
Voice training for inclusivity: One of the biggest challenges has been finding a truly gender-neutral voice for Eddie’s video avatar. A great example of how human bias is baked into AI tools - HeyGen only offer voices that are predominantly male-presenting or female-presenting. At the time of writing this post we’re exploring working with a voice artist in order to train an AI tool on a more gender neutral voice, but even that approach is fraught with ethical concerns and considerations. And so we’ll keep working on how to solve the issue, and our experience with this will even form part of the top and tailing of the keynote in which we share our (human) experiences of this approach.
And yes, we’ll talk about the experiment too
Eddie won’t be alone on stage. We (real-life humans!) will open and close the session to give context to the keynote and reflect on the process, the technology, and what we’ve learned through this experiment.
This is more than just a tech demo. It’s a live case study in pushing creative boundaries, questioning authorship, and inviting critical conversation around how we build future event experiences.
We’re not claiming to have all the answers. But we’re inviting you into the experiment. We want to explore with transparency, integrity, and a bit of fun. Because if we’re asking how AI can support our work, we also need to ask what it means to collaborate with it - and where its limitations still lie.
Why we’re doing this
ContentEd is all about experimentation, storytelling, and shaping the future of education marketing and content strategy. Eddie represents what’s possible when creativity, strategy, and technology intersect. And yes - it’s a little wild and we might fail in a very visible and vulnerable way, on a global stage. But it’s also incredibly exciting and we feel like the failures are part of the learning experience that the ContentEd audience expect from us - so perhaps in reality there’s no way that we actually can fail?
We’ll be sharing more behind the scenes as we build the session. And we hope you’ll join us at the online conference this year to watch Eddie’s keynote and many many other great sessions
Sign up for the ContentEd conference (21-22 October 2025, online and global).