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Vasco Translator Q1 Review: Cloning Your Voice

WIRED

This new real-time interpreter can change your language while cloning your voice--sort of. Live voice call translator raises the bar on these devices. Screen is tiny, making typing nearly impossible. Voice cloning feature is hit and miss. Real-time translation gadgets get another upgrade with Vasco's latest, a handheld translator with a feature that is decidedly cool, at least on paper: voice cloning technology.


'AI doesn't know what an orgasm sounds like': audiobook actors grapple with the rise of robot narrators

The Guardian

When we think about what makes an audiobook memorable, it's always the most human moments: a catch in the throat when tears are near, or words spoken through a real smile. A Melbourne actor and audiobook narrator, Annabelle Tudor, says it's the instinct we have as storytellers that makes narration such a primal, and precious, skill. "The voice betrays how we're feeling really easily," she says. But as an art form it may be under threat. In May the Amazon-owned audiobook provider Audible announced it would allow authors and publishers to choose from more than 100 voices created by artificial intelligence to narrate audiobooks in English, Spanish, French and Italian, with AI translation of audiobooks expected to be available later in the year – news that was met with criticism and curiosity across the publishing industry.


AI system restores speech for paralyzed patients using own voice

FOX News

Researchers in California have achieved a significant breakthrough with an AI-powered system that restores natural speech to paralyzed individuals in real time, using their own voices, specifically demonstrated in a clinical trial participant who is severely paralyzed and cannot speak. This innovative technology, developed by teams at UC Berkeley and UC San Francisco, combines brain-computer interfaces (BCI) with advanced artificial intelligence to decode neural activity into audible speech. Compared to other recent attempts to create speech from brain signals, this new system is a major advancement. GET SECURITY ALERTS & EXPERT TECH TIPS – SIGN UP FOR KURT'S'THE CYBERGUY REPORT' NOW The system uses devices such as high-density electrode arrays that record neural activity directly from the brain's surface. It also works with microelectrodes that penetrate the brain's surface and non-invasive surface electromyography sensors placed on the face to measure muscle activity.


Brain implant helps woman with paralysis speak with her own voice again

Popular Science

Researchers have developed a new method for intercepting neural signals from the brain of a person with paralysis and translating them into audible speech--all in near real-time. The result is a brain-computer interface (BCI) system similar to an advanced version of Google Translate, but instead of converting one language to another, it deciphers neural data and transforms it into spoken sentences. Recent advancements in machine learning have enabled researchers to train AI voice synthesizers using recordings of the individual's own voice, making the generated speech more natural and personalized. Patients with paralysis have already used BCI to improve physical motor control function by controlling computer mice and prosthetic limbs. This particular system addresses a more specific subsection of patients who have also lost their capacity to speak.


The life-changing benefits of Apple's Personal Voice and Live Speech

FOX News

Create a synthesized voice that sounds just like you. Imagine losing the ability to speak and communicate with your loved ones. What if you could preserve your unique voice and continue expressing yourself, even when speaking becomes challenging? Apple's Personal Voice and Live Speech features are groundbreaking accessibility tools designed to do exactly that. These innovative technologies allow you to create a synthesized voice that sounds just like you, giving individuals at risk of losing their speech a powerful way to maintain their personal communication style.


Lucky You!

The Atlantic - Technology

Today's youth should be very grateful to be alive now, in the age of smartphones and AI. These godsends were unimaginable when I was growing up several decades ago, and up until two decades ago they were still unimaginable. You youngsters are truly blessed to have such advanced technology at your beck and call. Never forget: Your AI-driven smartphone is your best friend. Make sure you always have it with you, preferably right in front of your eyes.


AI's Influence on Music Is Raising Some Difficult Questions

TIME - Tech

Earlier this year, Bad Bunny emphatically rejected rumors that he was about to release a new song with Justin Bieber. "That's fake," he told TIME in an interview for a cover story on his meteoric rise. "You never know what I'm going to do." But last month, a song featuring what sounded like his and Bieber's voices started circulating on TikTok, garnering millions of likes. Bad Bunny hadn't lied in the interview, though: the song was created with AI.


Scientists can now cause people to hear phantom voices and 'feel a presence in the room'

Daily Mail - Science & tech

Scientists can now cause people to hear phantom voices. Generally, 5-10 percent of healthy individuals hallucinate, according to a recent series of psychiatric surveys conducted in Norway. But to understand why, a team of scientists in Switzerland have now tested the Link between the senses of touch and hearing, using a finger-like robotic system to find out what makes people'hear things' or feel a presence in the room a common form of hallucination. Healthy Volunteers would push a button to stimulate the movement of a device in the lab: a robotic'finger' behind them that would give the test subjects a small tap on the back. Typically, there were short to no delays between each button push and the poke -- but when there was a delay, participants would activate that sixth sense, feeling as if someone was close to them speaking.


Now you can chat with ChatGPT using your voice

MIT Technology Review

In a demo the company gave me last week, Joanne Jang, a product manager, showed off ChatGPT's range of synthetic voices. These were created by training the text-to-speech model on the voices of actors that OpenAI had hired. In the future it might even allow users to create their own voices. "In fashioning the voices, the number-one criterion was whether this is a voice you could listen to all day," she says. They are chatty and enthusiastic but won't be to everyone's taste.


Large-Scale Automatic Audiobook Creation

Walsh, Brendan, Hamilton, Mark, Newby, Greg, Wang, Xi, Ruan, Serena, Zhao, Sheng, He, Lei, Zhang, Shaofei, Dettinger, Eric, Freeman, William T., Weimer, Markus

arXiv.org Artificial Intelligence

An audiobook can dramatically improve a work of literature's accessibility and improve reader engagement. However, audiobooks can take hundreds of hours of human effort to create, edit, and publish. In this work, we present a system that can automatically generate high-quality audiobooks from online e-books. In particular, we leverage recent advances in neural text-to-speech to create and release thousands of human-quality, open-license audiobooks from the Project Gutenberg e-book collection. Our method can identify the proper subset of e-book content to read for a wide collection of diversely structured books and can operate on hundreds of books in parallel. Our system allows users to customize an audiobook's speaking speed and style, emotional intonation, and can even match a desired voice using a small amount of sample audio. This work contributed over five thousand open-license audiobooks and an interactive demo that allows users to quickly create their own customized audiobooks. To listen to the audiobook collection visit \url{https://aka.ms/audiobook}.