'Extremist movements are using voice-generating bots to recreate the voices and speeches of major figures in their milieu.' 'Extremist movements are using voice-generating bots to recreate the voices and speeches of major figures in their milieu.' Extremists are using AI voice cloning to supercharge propaganda. Experts say it's helping them grow W hile the artificial intelligence boom is upending sections of the music industry, voice generating bots are also becoming a boon to another unlikely corner of the internet: extremist movements that are using them to recreate the voices and speeches of major figures in their milieu, and experts say it is helping them grow. "The adoption of AI-enabled translation by terrorists and extremists marks a significant evolution in digital propaganda strategies," said Lucas Webber, a senior threat intelligence analyst at Tech Against Terrorism and a research fellow at the Soufan Center.

This paper analyses AI-generated podcasts produced by Google's NotebookLM, which generates audio podcasts with two chatty AI hosts discussing whichever documents a user uploads. While AI-generated podcasts have been discussed as tools, for instance in medical education, they have not yet been analysed as media. By uploading different types of text and analysing the generated outputs I show how the podcasts' structure is built around a fixed template. I also find that NotebookLM not only translates texts from other languages into a perky standardised Mid-Western American accent, it also translates cultural contexts to a white, educated, middle-class American default. This is a distinct development in how publics are shaped by media, marking a departure from the multiple public spheres that scholars have described in human podcasting from the early 2000s until today, where hosts spoke to specific communities and responded to listener comments, to an abstraction of the podcast genre.

AI now sounds more like us - should we be concerned? Several wealthy Italian businessmen received a surprising phone call earlier this year. The speaker, who sounded just like Defence Minister Guido Crosetto, had a special request: Please send money to help us free kidnapped Italian journalists in the Middle East. But it was not Crosetto at the end of the line. He only learned about the calls when several of the targeted businessmen contacted him about them.

But the default voices for these assistants are often white American--British, if you're lucky--and most definitely speak English. And if you're one of the billions of people who don't speak English, bad luck: These tools don't sound nearly as good in other languages. This is because the data that has gone into training these models is limited. In AI research, most data used to train models is extracted from the English-language internet, which reflects Anglo-American culture. But there is a massive grassroots effort underway to change this status quo and bring more transparency and diversity to what AI sounds like.

Never before has it been easier to clone a human voice. New AI tools can take a voice sample, process it, copy it, and say anything in the voice of the original. It's been a thing since as early as 2018, but modern tools can do it faster, more accurately, and with greater ease. OpenAI, the artificial intelligence company behind ChatGPT, presented a project this year that showed how it's possible to clone a voice with nothing more than a 15-second recording. OpenAI's tool isn't yet publicly available and it's said to have security measures in place to prevent misuse.

The lawsuits allege Udio produced output with "striking resemblances" to songs including Dancing Queen by ABBA and All I Want For Christmas Is You by Mariah Carey, while Suno allegedly turned out songs similar to I Got You (I Feel Good) by James Brown and Johnny B. Goode by Chuck Berry, among others. Record labels were able to basically recreate versions of very famous songs with highly specific prompts, then linked to them in the lawsuits. I made a short compilation here:https://t.co/9Nu7rW7eqD These lawsuits are not the first to trouble the booming generative AI industry. Visual artists have sued makers of image generating systems, while various newspapers are suing OpenAI, the owner of ChatGPT, for similar allegations.

WEHEAD connects to ChatGPT and displays a face, expressions and voice. The voice Alexis "Lexi" Bogan had before last summer was exuberant. She loved to belt out Taylor Swift and Zach Bryan ballads in the car. She laughed all the time -- even while corralling misbehaving preschoolers or debating politics with friends over a backyard fire pit. In high school, she was a soprano in the chorus.

WEHEAD connects to ChatGPT and displays a face, expressions and voice. If you are battling a video game goblin who speaks with a Cockney accent, or asking a gruff Scottish blacksmith to forge a virtual sword, you might be hearing the voice of actor Andy Magee. It's a synthetic voice clone generated by artificial intelligence. As video game worlds get more expansive, some game studios are experimenting with AI tools to give voice to a potentially unlimited number of characters and conversations. It also saves time and money on the "vocal scratch" recordings game developers use as placeholders to test scenes and scripts.

Ubisoft's Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown launches next week, but players are likely to encounter an amusing bug as they make their way through the game, as reported by IGN. One of the game's NPCs is voiced by a text-to-speech program, complete with the slightly robotic tones we've come to associate with these services. It's not quite Siri or Alexa, but it's close and certainly doesn't fit the game's Persian-inspired setting. The NPC-in-question is a tree spirit named Kalux and seems to be voiced by a TTS program that's available online for free and typically used by streamers. This isn't an "AI is coming for your jobs" type thing, but rather a mistake on Ubisoft's part, as each and every other NPC is attached to a voice actor.

SAG-AFTRA, the union representing thousands of performers, has struck a deal with an AI voice acting platform aimed at making it easier for actors to license their voice for use in video games. Under the deal, which was announced during a press event at CES 2024, SAG-AFTRA members will be able to work with Replica Studios to license their voice to game studios. Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, the union's top negotiator, said that the agreement "paves the way for professional voiceover artists to safely explore new employment opportunities for their digital voice replicas." The agreement comes as Hollywood is still grappling with the use of AI. Last year, SAG-AFTRA reached a deal with Hollywood studios that included AI protections following a months-long strike.