We learn from our mistakes

Sparring digital partners: why training with AI is the new skills training ground

Digital tools that simulate professional conversations allow practice without embarrassment, fostering learning through practice and error in safe and personalised contexts

by Carlo Biggi*

3 March 2026

5' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

5' min read

Translated by AI

Versione italiana

In the beginning, there is neither business nor technology, but theatre. In the 1920s, in Vienna, the psychiatrist Jacob Levy Moreno invented psychodrama: he asked patients to go on stage and perform real episodes from their lives: a family conflict, an unresolved argument, a recurring fear. Sometimes he even invites them to play the other person, reversing roles. Moreno discovers something simple and radical: people understand and change much more by acting out relationships than by simply telling them. From Moreno onwards, the role play knows great success, especially in corporate training. Yet it carries with it a paradox that endures to this day: it is one of those practices universally recognised as useful, but universally avoided. Everyone knows it works, few really love it. There is always an underlying awkwardness: the colleague acting badly, the boss watching, the feeling of 'faking it' in front of others.

We don't know if digital sparring partners would have appealed to Moreno, but they certainly put people more at ease than traditional role play. Because they allow sparring without an audience, without judgement and without embarrassment. And above all because they take up the same intuition from a century ago: interpersonal skills are not explained, they are practised.

Sparring digital partners: what they are

A digital sparring partner - or 'AI Role Play' - is a system that simulates a credible professional conversation. It can play a customer, a co-worker, a boss, a patient, a difficult colleague. The person interacts by writing or speaking, and receives responses consistent with the scenario.

Digital sparring partners are therefore artificial interlocutors designed to simulate real conversations and allow people to really train. Not tutors who explain, not talking slides, but sparring partners who ask questions, raise objections, react. As happens in everyday professional life. The value does not lie in the 'right answer', but in the process: trying several times, changing approach, observing reactions, understanding what works and what does not. In other words, practising trial and error, the kind that is often lacking in traditional classrooms, for reasons of time or simple embarrassment.

Why do corporate trainers like them, and who participates?

Practice without anxiety

Training with a digital system lowers the emotional threshold. People dare more, make more mistakes, experiment with alternatives. And that is exactly how one learns.

Coherence without rigidity

Digital sparring partners make it possible to keep messages, values and behaviour consistent with the company's desired ones, while leaving freedom in the conversation. They are not scripts to be followed, but training grounds with clear rules.

Soft skills become observable

Without turning everything into a report card, these tools make certain patterns of behaviour visible and can offer structured feedback to participants: quality of questions, handling of objections, listening skills, reactions to stress. Not to judge, but to improve.

The Limits

Digital sparring partners do not, as yet, replace the experience of face-to-face training, let alone real experience. They do not automatically guarantee transfer to the workplace: if the proposed behavioural model is poor, one learns to 'play with the system', not to talk to people.

They cannot improvise without risk: for example, in regulated contexts - healthcare, finance, HR - great attention is needed to content and messages, to what in the language of generative AI are called 'guardrails', the barriers that prevent the conversation from derailing and proposing erroneous or even dangerous patterns of behaviour. And they can be perceived as tools of control if misused, generating resistance instead of learning; for example, deciding to turn feedback into passing marks is not always a good idea.

As is often the case, it is not the instrument that is the problem, but the use to which it is put.

I formats: it's not just a question of technology

Digital sparring partners can be realised in different formats, and the choice is first and foremost didactic.

- Text chatbots: ideal for training thinking, discourse structure, question quality.

- Voicebots: they introduce rhythm, silence, interruptions. Very effective for sales and customer service.

- Avatar videos: they increase emotional involvement and the feeling of presence, although for now they have high costs and performance not always in line with expectations.

- Immersive simulation (VR): useful for situations with a high emotional impact, such as conflict or difficult feedback, but with current limitations in terms of cost and performance.

The rule is simple: the more relational and emotional the competence, the more realism is needed.

Where have digital sparring partners been used so far? In which companies?

SAP: train the conversation, not just the message

At SAP, digital sparring partners were used to support onboarding and continuous development of the global sales force. The goal is not to improve product knowledge, but to train the way of talking to the customer: asking questions, handling objections, building value during the conversation. In a complex and consultative B2B context, it is a consistent choice: the difference is not the perfect slide, but the quality of the dialogue.

Walmart: preparing for difficult situations before they happen

Walmart has adopted digital and immersive simulations for training store managers and customer service staff on complex relationship scenarios: dissatisfied customers, difficult conversations with co-workers, managing stress at work. Here, the digital sparring partner becomes a preventive training ground: it allows them to deal with high-emotional-impact situations in a safe context, reducing improvisation when the problem really arises.

Health care: improving doctor-patient communication

In healthcare, university hospitals and clinical organisations use simulations with virtual patients to train communication: from anamnesis to bad news, from therapeutic adherence to anxiety management. The value is not in 'saying the right sentence', but in seeing the effect of one's words. A paradigm shift that places clinical competence alongside an increasingly central relational competence.

AI Challenger for insurance agents

In Newton, we observed a classic disconnect in the insurance world: certain portions of the offering are a priority for the company (for marginality, retention or portfolio protection), but in the field they are often overlooked because they are more difficult to talk about or simply due to a lack of experience.

This is what the AI Challenger was created for: a digital sparring partner that simulates agent-customer conversations and forces one to practise precisely those 'uncomfortable' topics, amidst realistic questions and objections.

Not theory, but training: because the distance between strategy and sales is rarely bridged with a slide, but with repeated conversations until it becomes natural.

The added value: not the technology, but what you put into it

Technology in itself is no longer the differentiating factor today.

Chatbots, voicebots, avatars are powerful but increasingly accessible tools; what really makes the difference is what you decide to train and how.

A digital sparring partner only works if it is built on:

- solid models of interpersonal skills

- behaviour observed in the field

- typical mistakes, wrong shortcuts, real objections

- effective and viable alternatives

This is the approach we take at Newton with our AI Challengers: not just 'intelligent' chatbots, but sparring partners trained in the interpersonal skills we have been developing for over twenty-five years in our training programmes.

AI Challengers are integrated into e-learning courses to multiply practice opportunities: consultative selling, leadership, organisational communication: technology makes everything scalable, but the value lies in knowing which conversations are worth coaching.

This is the real challenge for those working in resources: stop asking what technology to use and start asking what kind of people we want to help them become.

Because relationship skills are not learned by listening, they are learned by talking and making mistakes. Better if with a partner who never tires.

* Head of Digital Academy, Newton S.p.A.