Latest news with #voicecloning
RNZ News
3 days ago
- RNZ News
Voice cloning and the dodgy unsubscribe button
Chief Online Safety Officer for Netsafe Sean Lyons is back to talk about some of the dodgy online activity we should be on the lookout for. This week: voice cloning, the unsubscribe button in emails, and the return of smart glasses. Photo: 123RF
BBC News
14-07-2025
- Business
- BBC News
New AI voice tool trained to copy British regional accents
A new AI voice-cloning tool from a British firm claims to be able to reproduce a range of UK accents more accurately than some of its US and Chinese much of the data traditionally used to train AI products with voices comes from North American or southern English speaking sources, many artificial voices tend to sound combat this, the company Synthesia spent a year compiling its own database of UK voices with regional accents, through recording people in studios and gathering online used those to train a product called Express-Voice, which can clone a real person's voice or generate a synthetic can be used in content such as training videos, sales support and company said its customers wanted more accurate regional representations."If you're the CEO of a company, or if you're just a regular person, when you have your likeness, you want your accent to be preserved," said Synthesia Head of Research Youssef Alami added French-speaking customers had also commented that synthetic French voices tended to sound French-Canadian rather than originating from France."This is just because the companies building these models tend to be North American companies, and they tend to have datasets that are biased towards the demographics that they're in," he hardest accents to mimic are the least common, Mr Mejjati said, because there is less recorded material available to train an AI are also reports that voice-prompted AI products, such as smart speakers, are more likely to struggle to understand a range of year, internal documents from West Midlands Police revealed worries about whether voice recognition systems would understand Brummie the US-based start-up Sanas is taking the opposite approach, developing tools for deployment in call centres which "neutralise" the accents of Indian and Filipino staff, as reported by Bloomberg in March. The firm says it aims to reduce "accent discrimination" experienced by workers when callers fail to understand them. Endangered languages and dialects There is concern that languages and dialects are being lost in the digital era."Among the over seven thousand languages that still exist today, almost half are endangered according to UNESCO; about a third have some online presence; less than 2 percent are supported by Google Translate; and according to OpenAI's own testing, only fifteen, or 0.2 percent are supported by GPT-4 [an OpenAI model] above an 80 percent accuracy," writes Karen Hao in the book Empire of AI."Language models are homogenising speech," agrees AI expert Henry Ajder, who advises governments and tech firms, including the better these products become, the more effective they will also be in the hands of product will not be free when it is released in the coming weeks, and will have guardrails around hate speech and explicit there are already many free, open-source voice-cloning tools which are easily accessible and less the beginning of July, messages generated by an AI-cloned voice impersonating US Secretary of State Marco Rubio were reported to have been sent to ministers."The open source landscape for voice has evolved so rapidly over the last nine to 12 months," Mr Ajder adds."And that, from a safety perspective, is a real concern." Sign up for our Tech Decoded newsletter to follow the world's top tech stories and trends. Outside the UK? Sign up here.
Khaleej Times
14-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Khaleej Times
Mexican voice actors demand regulation on AI voice cloning
Mexican actors protested the growing threat artificial intelligence poses to their industry, calling on Sunday for better regulations to prevent voice cloning without consent. The rise of AI was a key issue in Hollywood's 2023 actors and writers' strikes, as creatives feared studios would use the technology to replace paid content. Last year, actor Scarlett Johansson accused tech firm OpenAI of imitating her voice for one of their chatbots. The company responded by modifying the tone. From the Monument to the Revolution in downtown Mexico City, dozens of audiovisual professionals held signs, including ones that read: "I don't want to be replaced by AI." "We are requesting that the voice be considered a biometric so that it is protected," Lili Barba, president of the Mexican Association of Commercial Announcements, told AFP. The 52-year-old actress, known for voicing Disney's Daisy Duck, referred to a video by the National Electoral Institute (INE) on TikTok. Released following the judicial elections on June 1, the video used the voice of the late actor Jose Lavat -- famous for the Spanish dubbing of stars like Robert De Niro and Al Pacino -- to thank citizens for voting. According to local media, Lavat's voice was used without his family's consent. "It's a major violation, and we can't allow it," said Barba. Actress Harumi Nishizawa, 35, said dubbing a character is "like embroidery." "As an artist, you can create certain tones, pay attention to nuances … observe the real actors' expressions and try to emulate what's happening on screen," she said. If no legislation is passed, she said voice dubbing done by humans "will disappear," at the expense of millions of artists' jobs. In March, Amazon's streaming platform Prime Video announced tests of an AI-assisted dubbing system, a technology also promoted by YouTube. Last month, South Korea's entertainment powerhouse CJ ENM -- behind the Oscar-winning film Parasite -- showcased an AI tool that combines visuals, audio and voice in one system while automatically generating consistent 3D characters. But human voice actors still have the edge, said Mario Heras, dubbing director for video games in Mexico. AI cannot make dialogue "sound funny, broken, off -- or alive," he said. The human factor, he added, "protects us in this rebellion against the machines."
Entrepreneur
14-07-2025
- Business
- Entrepreneur
Meta Acquires PlayAI, Startup Generating Human-Like Voices
Through the acquisition, Meta is adding fresh talent to its ranks and bringing over the startup's 35 employees. In the latest chapter in Meta's AI buying and hiring spree, Meta has acquired AI voice cloning startup PlayAI. Meta confirmed the acquisition to Bloomberg, but didn't state the deal's value. According to an internal memo leaked to Bloomberg, the "entire PlayAI team," around 35 people, will join Meta this week. They will report to Johan Schalkwyk, a former speech AI researcher at Google who recently joined Meta from another AI voice startup called Sesame AI. PlayAI's core product is a voice cloning tool that can generate human-sounding voices. The startup has partnered with companies like Walgreens and Salesforce to create voice agents for businesses that are available to answer questions, handle transactions, and schedule appointments. Related: 'The Market Is Hot': Here's How Much a Typical Meta Employee Makes in a Year PlayAI's "work in creating natural voices, along with a platform for easy voice creation, is a great match for our work and road map, across AI Characters, Meta AI, Wearables, and audio content creation," Meta wrote in the leaked memo. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg at Meta Connect in September 2024. Photographer: David Paul Morris/Bloomberg via Getty Images Meta has been hiring and acquiring AI talent aggressively in recent months. In June, the company made one of its biggest investments yet, pouring $14.3 billion into AI data training startup Scale AI in exchange for a 49% stake in the startup and access to new talent. The deal brought Scale AI's former CEO, Alexandr Wang, to Meta as its new Chief AI Officer and head of a new team focused on developing superintelligence, or AI that surpasses human intelligence. Meta is paying top dollar to assemble a group of about 50 experts who will work to develop superintelligence with the aim of one day bringing it to Meta's products, including its AI smart glasses and chatbot. Scale AI's valuation more than doubled after the investment, rising from $14 billion to $29 billion. Meta has also been poaching AI researchers and engineers from OpenAI, Google, and Anthropic for its new superintelligence team with competitive compensation, which can go up to nine figures. Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg, 41, announced last month that former Google DeepMind researchers Jack Rae and Pei Sun and former OpenAI staff Trapit Bansal and Hongyu Ren would be joining the superintelligence team. Additionally, new details emerged last week that Meta is reportedly compensating former Apple engineer Ruoming Pang more than $200 million across several years to join its superintelligence effort — more than double the $74.6 million Apple CEO Tim Cook made last year. Related: Meta Invests Billions in World's Largest Eyewear Company After Ray-Ban Smart Glasses Success Meta stock was up over 19% year-to-date at the time of writing. The company has a market value of $1.81 trillion, making it the sixth largest in the world by market capitalization.
Yahoo
14-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Yahoo
Mexican voice actors demand regulation on AI voice cloning
Mexican actors protested the growing threat artificial intelligence poses to their industry, calling on Sunday for better regulations to prevent voice cloning without consent. The rise of AI was a key issue in Hollywood's 2023 actors and writers' strikes, as creatives feared studios would use the technology to replace paid content. Last year, actor Scarlett Johansson accused tech firm OpenAI of imitating her voice for one of their chatbots. The company responded by modifying the tone. From the Monument to the Revolution in downtown Mexico City, dozens of audiovisual professionals held signs, including ones that read: "I don't want to be replaced by AI." "We are requesting that the voice be considered a biometric so that it is protected," Lili Barba, president of the Mexican Association of Commercial Announcements, told AFP. The 52-year-old actress, known for voicing Disney's Daisy Duck, referred to a video by the National Electoral Institute (INE) on TikTok. Released following the judicial elections on June 1, the video used the voice of the late actor Jose Lavat -- famous for the Spanish dubbing of stars like Robert De Niro and Al Pacino -- to thank citizens for voting. According to local media, Lavat's voice was used without his family's consent. "It's a major violation, and we can't allow it," said Barba. Actress Harumi Nishizawa, 35, said dubbing a character is "like embroidery." "As an artist, you can create certain tones, pay attention to nuances … observe the real actors' expressions and try to emulate what's happening on screen," she said. If no legislation is passed, she said voice dubbing done by humans "will disappear," at the expense of millions of artists' jobs. In March, Amazon's streaming platform Prime Video announced tests of an AI-assisted dubbing system, a technology also promoted by YouTube. Last month, South Korea's entertainment powerhouse CJ ENM -- behind the Oscar-winning film Parasite -- showcased an AI tool that combines visuals, audio and voice in one system while automatically generating consistent 3D characters. But human voice actors still have the edge, said Mario Heras, dubbing director for video games in Mexico. AI cannot make dialogue "sound funny, broken, off -- or alive," he said. The human factor, he added, "protects us in this rebellion against the machines." bur-cdl/lb Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
