AI has yet again tapped into a realm of humanity that may stir up some controversy: human voice cloning.
Lyrebird, a Montreal-based AI startup, has developed an online API that does just that. The process is relatively simple, and within just a few moments, the software can create a digital recreation of your real-life voice.
Upon signing up on the website, users are asked to spend about a minute recording their voices saying fairly obscure sentences like, “Most people there take it out pretty early in life,” and “Thousands of letters danced across the amateur author’s screen.”
After recording, the software manufactures a digital version of your voice, which can read sentences with words that were never recorded in the first place, with an emotional cadence and in an eerie lifelike manner. When considering the capability of AI software such as Lyrebird and the like, questions arise surrounding the malicious ways it may be misused.