Quincy Surasmith is a radio journalist and actor, but you may also hear his voice and never realize it. That's because he's been the voice of Thai-speaking cartoons, chattering background crowds, and characters without major speaking roles. "I'm making grunting noises, getting beat up by some guy," Suarasmith says. "It takes specific improv and acting skills." Soon those grunting and background chatter performances could be at risk of being replaced by artificial intelligence.

Lovo, Inc., an AI voice-over platform developed by a team of AI and machine experts from the Univerity of California-Berkeley, has launched what the company describes as "a human-like voice-over platform" designed for education, marketing, entertainment, and other audio content. The company is presently targeting its Lovo Studio platform for businesses, governments, and other entities, "given the current need for'distance narration' during this period of social distancing" in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. "LOVO Studio provides many options for getting voice-over projects done during these tough times of working remotely, creating marketing videos, educational materials, corporate videos, and other voice-over projects," which have "been very difficult" with so many governments and business offices shuttered, the company emphasized in its announcement. The company said its new Lovo Studio is a sophisticated and easy-to-use platform using AI to … recreate a human voice with emotion and tone gradations which make either cloned or synthesized voices sound very realistic." With the "emotional range and realistic vocal characteristics" that are available, the company said Lovo Studio's "cloned voices are practically indistinguishable from the original voice." The "platform also provides more than 50 other voices, both computer-created and human, from which to choose for any voice work without needing a studio or expensive equipment." A recent graduate from the Fall 2019 UC Berkeley SkyDeck accelerator group, Lovo Studio, generates "a realistic-sounding voice'clone' with only five minutes of a target voice clip," which "during a time of social distancing … makes it very fast and easy to generate online learning materials or voice-overs for remote production projects." "You can hide your emotions behind words, but you can't hide it in your voice.