#28 Saniya Vardak x Girls Who Prompt: The Episode Where an AI Avatar Joined the Show

In this episode of Girls Who Prompt, Karin and Ave sit down with Saniya Vardak, Head of Growth at Beyond Presence — a Munich startup building real-time AI avatars that can see you, hear you, and respond in under 100 milliseconds.With nearly a decade scaling Wise, Wolt, and Deel, Saniya is now the sole marketer inside a company where the product didn't exist 18 months ago, growth is 45% month-on-month, and their avatar Nelly once fooled a room full of people into thinking she was real. Then Nelly crashed the Girls Who Prompt call. Live.This conversation is less about whether AI avatars are impressive and more about the harder question every company is quietly circling: where does the first layer end, and when does the human have to step back in?In this episode we discuss:What a real-time AI avatar actually is — and what makes Nelly different from a chatbot, a safety video, or a deepfakeWhy users learning a language with an AI avatar outperform peer-to-peer learners — and why feeling less judged is the whole reasonThe "first layer" question: where AI contact ends and the human must take over (and why Saniya believes that line still matters deeply)Europe vs. the rest: why GDPR-first, ethics-first avatar design is Beyond Presence's founding philosophy — not just a compliance checkboxWhy building your own avatar is starting to look a lot like the music industry — with royalties, licensing deals, and real contracts for real facesThe campaign where Beyond Presence asked people to spot the real human in the video — and most of them got it wrongOn imposter syndrome: how Saniya has made "I know nothing about this industry" her actual career strategy — across FinTech, food delivery, dating apps, and now AI avatarsA reminder for anyone who feels behind the curve: Saniya has started from zero in every single industry she's entered. She delivers anyway. The not-knowing isn't the obstacle. It's the method.Meet the guest: • Saniya Vardak — Head of Growth at Beyond PresenceMeet the hosts:Karin Nemec, the finance brain and founder exploring the fine line between human emotion and machine response.Ave Annuk, marketer and storyteller interested in AI and passionate about digital marketing, books, movies and learning.Meet the team:🎵 Post-production, editing & music by Vincent Roy — audio expert, sound designer and composer.📧 Write us: [email protected] 💬 Join the discussion and suggest guests in our WhatsApp channel.