Lyrebird Claims It Can Recreate Anyone's Voice Based On Just a 1 Minute Sample (theverge.com)

Artem Tashkinov writes: Today, a Canadian artificial intelligence startup named Lyrebird unveiled its voice imitation deep learning algorithm that can mimic a person's voice and have it read any text with a given emotion, based on the analysis of just a few dozen seconds of audio recording. The website features samples using the recreated voices of Donald Trump, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton. A similar technology was created by Adobe around a year ago but it requires over 20 minutes of recorded speech. The company sets to open its APIs to the public, while the computing for the task will be performed in the cloud.

Comments

AI killing industry

[Anonymous Coward]

Goodbye, voice actors.
Film actors, you're next.

Re:AI killing industry

[grumling]

People don't realize the amount of effort people are willing to put into CGI. Same thing will happen with voices. Photorealistic actors are already here, we see them all the time but don't realize it. Just about every action movie made in the 2000's has heavy doses of CGI, often times in surprising scenes where one wouldn't expect to see it.

Hollywood bean counters will love it because it means higher profits. Cable networks will love it because they can crank out cheap product. Producers and directors will love it because they can program actors like the program CGI. Actors will love it because they can get back on the stage and forget about that movie stuff. Viewers will love it because we really just want to look at pretty pictures and are happy to suspend our beliefs if the face is pretty enough.

Re:How long before estates of dead entertainers su

[The Raven]

This is true in the same way that auto-tune removes the need for musical singing ability. Sure, you can force a certain note, but it sounds artificial. Similarly this tool can replicate a voice at standard timbres and emotions well enough to be recognizable, but not well enough to be undetectable as a digital emulation.

It's not until it's undetectable (such as some of the best modern CGI) that we'll actually have made actors obsolete. Except... amazingly, CGI costs more than the actors, it's less flexible, and slower. I think it will be quite a while before we have something that is both on-par for quality and cheaper than a skilled live human.

Frankly I find this scary

[Anonymous Coward]

I wouldn't class myself as a technophobe but this leaves us all open to the creation of a "confession" for something we have not done. Scary shit in my opinion. And no I don't trust some law inforcement agencies or in fact some government agencies to do just that. (I'll put on my tinfoil hat)

Re:Imagine when the dishonest and corrupt CIA

[pushing-robot]

I suspect more the reverse; it will be a convenient way to deny anything inconvenient.

1. Leader: 'X'
2. Leader: 'I never said X'
3. Opposition: 'But hundreds of people heard you say X'
4. Leader: 'Either they are my enemies, in which case they are liars, or they are my supporters, and know in their heart I didn't say X'
5. Opposition: 'We even have a video of you saying X'
6. Leader: 'And you just made that up, with your computers and things! Enemies! Off with your heads!'

There seems to be a global current these days, away from the principles of Enlightenment and Absolutism, back toward Authoritarianism and the denial of objectivity. When facts become subjective, all viewpoints are equally valid and 'truth' can be determined by vote or decree. Quite Nineteen Eighty-Four (although it predated Orwell by thousands of years).

Re:Are you guys actually listening to these sample

[platinummyr]

The point of this isn't that they can recreate 100% believable audio yet, but that they can get really close, and that it's going to happen relatively soon, so we should stop relying on audio recording as authentic.