Make an AI avatar from a prompt, traits or a photo: $0.95 a call

You can create an avatar three ways on Sume Avatar 1.0, and each is one POST /v1/avatar-1.0/generate that costs a flat $0.95: a text prompt, structured traits (the props type), or a reference image (the photo type). The result is a reusable avatar handle you pass to later talking videos (Create new avatar).

Pick the input

Traits and photo bodies

Both bodies come from the docs. The handle may start with @; Sume stores it without the @.

# traits
curl -X POST https://api.sume.com/v1/avatar-1.0/generate \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: avatar-profile-001" \
  -d '{"avatar_handle":"product_host","input":{"type":"props","ethnicity":"Asian","sex":"female","age":28}}'

# photo
curl -X POST https://api.sume.com/v1/avatar-1.0/generate \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $SUME_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Idempotency-Key: avatar-image-001" \
  -d '{"avatar_handle":"reference_presenter","input":{"type":"photo","image_url":"https://example.com/reference.png"}}'

What the photo URL must be

Before Sume submits a photo generation it rejects localhost, private-network URLs, non-HTTPS URLs and responses that are not images. Host the picture somewhere public, or upload it first and use the resulting URL.

Budget for a roster

The price is per avatar, not per second, so a roster is a plain multiplication.

After creation

Each request creates a job. Poll /v1/jobs/{id}/status until it completes, then fetch /v1/jobs/{id}/result. List avatars with GET /v1/avatar-1.0/avatars.

Send an Idempotency-Key so a retried network call returns the same job instead of a second charge.

Then put the avatar to work

The $0.95 buys the avatar, not a video. Talking videos are billed per second by quality: standard, plus (the default when omitted) or max, at $0.184, $0.245 and $0.55 per second. A 30-second plus video is therefore $7.35 on top of the avatar, and one avatar can be reused for as many videos as you like (Generate avatar video).