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Voicemod created 20 “AI humans” digital characters that allow players to speak with voices other than their own.
voicemod
An artificial intelligence company in Spain has unveiled a number of “AI humans” that allow people to modify their voices in video games – in real time.
Voicemod, based in Valencia, on Wednesday released 20 humanoid characters, ranging from a 20-year-old woman to an elderly man. The voices are trained on voices from professional human voice actors.
In a demonstration of the technology on a call with CNBC, Voicemod CEO Jaime Bosch showed himself speaking regularly and changing it into several different voices, from a high-pitched female speaker to a baritone male voice.
Players can download the app to their Apple Mac or Windows computers and integrate Voicemod technology as a “virtual microphone” located between the microphone app they use to start speaking through their alternate characters.
Voicemod, which counts talents from leading technical universities in Valencia and Barcelona, has been working on voice synthesis and interactive voice features since 2014, with many of its employees specialized in music and audio technology.
Used by over 40 million people, Voicemod technology can be used by people on the social app Discord to talk to each other in voices other than their own while playing games.
“We have an amazing creative community who basically use this to have fun and have fun with their friends and a sense of belonging,” Bush said in an interview with CNBC.
“One of the biggest use cases I like the most is with shy people — we have some people who write to us saying I haven’t really been able to socialize with people who now can.”
It is a milestone in the world of conversational AI. While many of today’s AI algorithms allow people to send a text and receive something generated back by the AI, it’s much more difficult to accomplish this in real time.
Technology requires a great deal of computing power. Producing and patenting algorithm prototypes requires a lot of investment and talent.
To that end, Voicemod has raised $23 million in cash from various venture capitalists including Leadwind and Bitkraft Ventures.
And Bosch is also no stranger to the dangers surrounding how the technology can be misused—voice-changing technology could be used to imitate prominent political figures or defraud people, for example.
“It’s something I think about every day, something we think about at the company every day when it comes to creating sounds,” he said.
The company is nearing completion of a “watermark” solution that can identify whether sounds were created using modulation systems. It is also in discussions with other companies about standardizing these systems and ensuring the safe launch of voice-changing technology.
“One thing is clear laws will emerge,” Bush said. “We know that Europe is working on it. The reality is that companies usually go faster than laws.”
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