The latest developments in AI have transformed how organizations are able to train their employees. Now, using AI-powered avatars and even virtual reality (VR), training platforms are able to offer realistic scenarios that immerse learners and improve knowledge retention.
Leading businesses like PWC and Intel are already seeing great success when using immersive AI and VR training to upskill their employees. What separates great companies from the rest is their willingness to leverage the newest technology, and as we head into 2026 it’s clear that AI-powered training is the latest in that trend.
If you’re ready to adopt an AI training platform in your organization, we’ve put together this list comparing the unique features of leading providers available today to help you make your decision.
VirtualSpeech
VirtualSpeech is an AI-powered soft skills training platform that helps people develop communication skills such as public speaking, sales, and leadership.
VirtualSpeech’s award-winning simulations mirror real-world scenarios, giving learners a safe place to practice and apply what they’ve learned. VirtualSpeech has 650,000+ users across 125+ countries, and has been featured in major publications like The New York Times, the BBC, and The Wall Street Journal.
VirtualSpeech has a comprehensive suite of features that allow learners to improve their soft skills in both VR and online, through a variety of practice exercises and CPD accredited courses that interweave theory with realistic roleplays.
VirtualSpeech also offers an AI coach, Hugh, that provides personalized feedback after every session. Learners can explore their feedback in a two-way conversation with the AI coach, and revisit key moments from the practiced scenario. This helps learners to reflect, refine, and turn the insights into real-world improvements.
VirtualSpeech caters to a variety of groups:
- Individual learners who want to improve skills such as public speaking
- Businesses looking to upskill their employees’ soft skills (Think sales pitching, handling difficult conversations, or customer service)
- Educational institutions looking to upskill students’ soft skills to better equip them for their studies and beyond (Think job interview preparation, presentations, and debate skills)
For businesses and educational institutions, VirtualSpeech offers bespoke pricing with flexible licensing options, and a no-credit system that ensures the platform is always ready for learners whenever they need it.
Overall, VirtualSpeech is well-respected and widely regarded as a leader among AI and VR training providers thanks to the platform’s immersive learning content and strong focus on soft skills.
VirtualSpeech key features:
Generative AI responses: VirtualSpeech uses the latest Generative AI models to power the platform’s avatars, allowing for users to experience realistic, immersive, and diverse conversations across dozens of scenarios and languages.
Off-the-Shelf Content: VirtualSpeech offers 55+ pre-built practice exercises and 20+ courses, each designed to help learners improve a specific soft skill. The practice exercises are easily accessible and ready to use off-the-shelf, covering presentation skills, customer service, elevator pitching, and more. VirtualSpeech’s courses intertwine theory, realistic practice, and AI feedback to maximize knowledge retention.
No-code Roleplay Creation Tool: In addition to off-the-shelf content, VirtualSpeech’s Roleplay Studio allows you to create custom scenarios and experiences that meet your organization’s exact needs – no coding skills required. In just 5 minutes, you can create a custom roleplay, set the feedback criteria that matter to you, and publish it to your learners.
Personalized AI Coaching: VirtualSpeech’s AI coach, Hugh, is available to learners after every exercise or roleplay. This gives learners the opportunity to explore their feedback, talk through challenges in a two-way conversation, and get clear on what to focus on next. This reflection reinforces the learner’s practice and helps turn it into real progress.
Learner Analytics & Reporting: VirtualSpeech has built-in analytics and reporting features for organizations that need to track learner progress at scale. In the platform’s admin dashboard, you can find detailed information on learners on both an individual and team level. Areas of strength, opportunities to improve, and learner skill gaps are all visible inside the VirtualSpeech admin dashboard.
Realistic Avatars: Immersion is a key part of making virtual reality training stick. VirtualSpeech features realistic AI-powered avatars that look, act, and speak like real people, enhancing learners’ immersion and making the learning experience even more realistic.
Available in VR and Online: VirtualSpeech is available to learners both on virtual reality headsets like the Meta Quest 3, and online in a web browser. The VR option provides an incredibly immersive experience, while the web version is accessible to all, even if they aren’t able to use VR headsets.
Strivr
Strivr is a VR training platform that’s aimed at enterprise organizations seeking to deploy AI-powered learning on a large scale.
Strivr offers users the option to use off-the-shelf content, or to work with their production team to create bespoke training tailored to your organization. Strivr’s pre-built training covers topics relevant to enterprise organizations across a variety of sectors, including onboarding, compliance training, workplace health and safety, and customer de-escalation.
Strivr’s platform includes a number of features that help enterprise organizations manage high volumes of both employees and training hardware. The Strivr Portal allows admins to track users’ progress through detailed analytics, as well as monitor the VR devices themselves, ensuring that both software and hardware remain up to date.
Strivr’s training content includes a mix of 360 degree video and virtual environments featuring digital avatars, and allows for users to select between multiple choices on how to act in the given scenario. They also offer curated collections of training modules in course bundles, allowing for easy access to training relevant to specific sectors or industries. Strivr Home, with its intuitive interface, acts as a central location for learners to access all of this training content.
Strivr’s training is available both in virtual reality and in a 2D browser-based environment, ensuring the platform is accessible even to those who can’t use VR headsets.
One of Strivr’s main benefits is how it integrates securely with enterprise IT and security systems, providing security and peace of mind for large organizations who are beholden to strict compliance and data privacy standards.
Overall, Strivr is a great choice for enterprise organizations looking to implement AI-driven VR training at scale due to their proven track record and strong feature suite.
Ovation VR
Ovation VR is a VR training platform aimed at helping users improve their conversational soft skills through the use of virtual environments and AI avatars.
Ovation allows its users to practice delivering speeches or presentations in a range of scenarios, from elevator pitches and debates to press conferences and interviews. These scenarios feature AI avatars in the audience who will clap, ask questions, maintain eye contact, and check their phones as you speak to them.
Ovation provides learners with real-time feedback on their performance, flagging things like use of filler words and lack of eye contact as the scenario unfolds, allowing the learner to correct their mistakes as they happen. After the session, further AI-powered feedback is generated, informing learners of what went well during their performance, and where they have room to improve.
For education organizations, Ovation offers detailed analytics on each student’s performance in the app, featuring transcripts, AI feedback, and more. In addition, the platform also offers the ability for educators to create custom assignments for their students to address specific skill gaps. All practice sessions in Ovation are recorded in 3D, which allows users to rewatch their sessions from various angles and analyze their own performance from the audience’s perspective.
Ovation is accessible in VR via supported Meta Quest headsets or in 2D through a downloadable application on Windows computers.
Overall, Ovation VR is a great option for individuals, or for educators looking to improve their students’ speaking skills using VR and AI.
Bodyswaps
Bodyswaps is a soft skills training platform powered by AI, offering immersive VR simulations that help users develop essential soft skills.
Bodyswaps features an array of training modules in their library. Through this library, learners can access a mix of AI roleplays covering topics from active listening, interview preparation, and conflict management, with many scenarios tailored to specific industries such as healthcare. In addition, the platform also offers AI roleplay templates which you can customize to meet any learner’s exact needs.
Bodyswaps provides learners with tailored AI feedback on their performance after each exercise, which reviews their use of communication techniques – and in some cases the learner can “swap bodies” with the AI avatar in order to assess their own performance from an alternative point of view.
For educational organizations, the platform offers “Bodyswaps Go”, a web portal that allows for educators to create learning pathways, build roleplays, and monitor student progress both individually and across classes. These learning pathways allow educators to mix traditional learning methods such as quizzes with the platform’s AI roleplays. Each pathway can be designed to work over just one session, or over a longer period of time.
As well as its educational offerings, Bodyswaps also offers VR training designed for healthcare professionals, employability agencies, and enterprise workplaces.
Bodyswaps is available on a number of VR headsets, as well as featuring both desktop and mobile versions of the platform.
Overall, Bodyswaps would definitely suit the needs of education institutions or workplaces looking to provide immersive learning experiences to their students or teams.
Virti
Virti is an AI roleplay and video training platform that uses immersive VR learning scenarios and AI analytics to help organizations train their learners in both soft and hard skills.
Virti’s platform includes the ability to create and customize AI-powered roleplays featuring virtual avatars as well as tools to enhance your existing video content with interactive elements that engage learners. These roleplays and videos allow learners to practice soft skills (such as how to handle difficult conversations) in a realistic setting.
As well as soft skills, Virti is also designed to support users in learning critical hard skills needed in settings such as healthcare. Interactive 360 degree videos help prepare medical professionals for intensive workplace scenarios such as surgeries in a safe, repeatable environment.
Virti uses gamified elements, such as interactive quizzes and achievements, integrated with roleplays and video content in order to engage learners and improve knowledge retention and learning outcomes.
Virti offers a comprehensive analytics suite, which provides organizations with the chance to use AI insights on learner progression to adapt learning paths and influence future training decisions. Virti’s platform is built to scale and support enterprise organizations’ needs on security, LMS integration, and scalability
Virti is available on a variety of VR headsets, as well as on desktop and mobile devices.
Overall, Virti would be a great choice for large organizations who need to provide a mix of soft and hard skills training for their learners at scale.
Cornerstone Immerse (Talespin)
Cornerstone Immerse, formerly known as Talespin, is an AI-driven immersive learning platform designed to help organizations improve their employees’ essential workplace soft skills.
Cornerstone Immerse features over 40 ready-made modules built to support learners in master key workplace skills like conflict resolution, active listening, and leadership. The platform also offers the ability to author custom learning experiences featuring virtual environments and characters that meet your organization’s needs.
Cornerstone Immerse allows organizations to deliver tailored learning at scale through one-on-one, AI-driven interactions in realistic simulations. Learners receive feedback on their interactions and can reflect on both their strengths and areas of improvement. In addition, Cornerstone Immerse’s Companion feature allows learners to take part in personalized, virtual mentoring sessions that means every employee receives training tailored to their specific needs.
Organizations can also measure learner performance at scale in the platform’s skills analytics dashboard, which allows for users’ learning outcomes to be tracked and ensure training is aligned with wider company objectives. Cornerstone Immerse offers a mix of immersive experiences, with some accessible solely via VR headset and others also available on a user’s desktop browser.
Overall, Cornerstone Immerse is a suitable choice for organizations looking for a scalable solution to provide their employees with AI-driven soft skills training.
Mursion
Mursion is an AI-powered upskilling platform designed to help organizations build up their employees’ interpersonal and communication skills.
Mursion offers a hybrid approach to immersive learning, offering human-directed training and coaching to power realistic, AI-driven simulations that allow learners to practice and receive real-time feedback. Mursion’s platform delivers tailored feedback from AI that scores learners’ performances during and after each session.
The Mursion Library offers access to pre-built course content which uses an AI-based scoring system, and covers topics ranging from resolving customer complaints to mediating disagreements. Mursion’s Experiences allow learners to take part in realistic AI interactions with virtual avatars that utilize both verbal and non-verbal cues.
Organizations can use Mursion’s Insights tool to track learner progress, align analytics with organizational goals, and identify areas of improvement that will lead to the greatest return on investment. In addition, Mursion Manager acts as an intuitive dashboard that lets admins track learning outcomes, compliance, and organizational competence at scale.
Mursion’s platform also allows learners to access on-demand AI simulations and upskilling sessions which are accessible on any browser-based device.
Overall, Mursion is a great choice for organizations seeking a mix of human and AI-powered training for their employees in a scalable package.
Second Nature
Second Nature is an AI roleplay platform targeted specifically at customer-facing sales teams and designed to help them boost sales and increase productivity.
Second Nature offers organizations the ability to train their sales teams in a scalable way, with AI-powered roleplays preparing employees for common sales situations such as discovery calls, handling objections, and cold calling.
Second Nature’s AI is capable of simulating a myriad of conversations and customer situations in order to get customer-facing teams ready for challenging real-world interactions. The platform offers the ability to create custom roleplay scenarios by uploading documents (such as a sales playbook) or describing the situation and context to an AI assistant who then builds the roleplay.
Second Nature’s AI can take examples of great sales calls and turn them into training lessons for other employees, by taking key actions from the example and turning them into a checklist used for scoring and feedback during virtual training interactions.
In addition, Second Nature offers certifications which add a gamified element to sales training, and can be used to certify new hires as part of their onboarding process.
Second Nature’s training roleplays allow sales representatives to practice delivering pitches, presenting slide decks, or being on video call with customers. Each simulation is analyzed by AI and instant feedback is delivered to the learner, so that they can improve their performance next time.
Overall, Second Nature is a great option for organizations specifically aiming to provide their sales teams with specialized training for customer interactions such as cold calls and pitching.
How does each platform compare?
