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      Tom Hanks warns of AI-generated doppelganger in Instagram plea

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Tuesday, 3 October - 19:22 · 1 minute

    A cropped portion of the AI-generated version of Hanks that the actor shared on his Instagram feed.

    Enlarge / A cropped portion of the AI-generated version of Hanks that the actor shared on his Instagram feed. (credit: Tom Hanks)

    News of AI deepfakes spread quickly when you're Tom Hanks. On Sunday, the actor posted a warning on Instagram about an unauthorized AI-generated version of himself being used to sell a dental plan. Hanks' warning spread in the media, including The New York Times . The next day, CBS anchor Gayle King warned of a similar scheme using her likeness to sell a weight-loss product. The now widely reported incidents have raised new concerns about the use of AI in digital media.

    "BEWARE!! There’s a video out there promoting some dental plan with an AI version of me. I have nothing to do with it," wrote Hanks on his Instagram feed. Similarly, King shared an AI-augmented video with the words "Fake Video" stamped across it, stating, "I've never heard of this product or used it! Please don't be fooled by these AI videos."

    Also on Monday, YouTube celebrity MrBeast posted on social media network X about a similar scam that features a modified video of him with manipulated speech and lip movements promoting a fraudulent iPhone 15 giveaway. "Lots of people are getting this deepfake scam ad of me," he wrote. "Are social media platforms ready to handle the rise of AI deepfakes? This is a serious problem."

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      Thanks to AI, “Elvis” likes big butts and he cannot lie—here’s how it’s possible

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Friday, 4 August, 2023 - 15:32

    A colorful illustration of a stylish rockstar with big hair.

    Enlarge (credit: Getty Images / Benj Edwards)

    Recently, a number of viral music videos from a YouTube channel called There I Ruined It have included AI-generated voices of famous musical artists singing lyrics from surprising songs. One recent example imagines Elvis singing lyrics to Sir Mix-a-Lot's Baby Got Back . Another features a faux Johnny Cash singing the lyrics to Aqua's Barbie Girl .

    (The original Elvis video has since been taken down from YouTube due to a copyright claim from Universal Music Group, but thanks to the magic of the Internet, you can hear it anyway .)

    An excerpt copy of the "Elvis Sings Baby Got Back" video.

    Obviously, since Elvis has been dead for 46 years (and Cash for 20), neither man could have actually sung the songs themselves. That's where AI comes in. But as we'll see, although generative AI can be amazing, there's still a lot of human talent and effort involved in crafting these musical mash-ups.

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      Grimes says anyone can AI-generate her voice “without penalty”

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Monday, 24 April, 2023 - 20:49 · 1 minute

    Grimes attends The 2021 Met Gala Celebrating In America: A Lexicon Of Fashion at Metropolitan Museum of Art on September 13, 2021 in New York City.

    Enlarge / Grimes attends The 2021 Met Gala Celebrating In America: A Lexicon Of Fashion at the Metropolitan Museum of Art on September 13, 2021, in New York City. (credit: Theo Wargo/Getty Images)

    On Sunday night, Canadian musician Grimes tweeted that she would split 50 percent royalties on "any successful AI generated song" that uses her voice, reports The Verge . As an independent artist, Grimes says anyone can use her voice without penalty. "I have no label and no legal bindings," she says.

    Her announcement comes after controversy over an unauthorized song featuring AI-generated vocals of Drake and The Weeknd that went viral earlier this month. Shortly after its reveal, the song got pulled from YouTube and other social media platforms under unclear circumstances, which The Verge reports could have been a botched fan tribute or a marketing stunt.

    Grimes is no stranger to the AI and tech cultural scene, having written music about AI and tweeted about the subject frequently. In February, OpenAI CEO Sam Altman tweeted an unlabeled photo of himself with Grimes and AI critic Eliezer Yudkowsky. Grimes also shares two children with her former partner Elon Musk, who recently signed a letter urging the slowdown of AI model development.

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      Herzog and Žižek become uncanny AI bots trapped in endless conversation

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Friday, 4 November, 2022 - 22:02

    AI-generated portraits of Werner Herzog and Slavoj Žižek from The Infinite Conversation

    Enlarge / AI-generated portraits of Werner Herzog and Slavoj Žižek from The Infinite Conversation. (credit: Giacomo Miceli / Ars Technica)

    This week, an Italian artist and programmer named Giacomo Miceli debuted The Infinite Conversation website, an AI-powered nonstop chat between artificial versions of German director Werner Herzog and Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek , complete with realistic voices.

    Upon visiting the site—which is unaffiliated with either person—you'll see AI-generated charcoal portraits of the two men in profile. Between them, a transcript of AI-generated text is highlighted in yellow as AI-generated voices simulating those of Herzog or Žižek read through it. The conversation goes back and forth between them, complete with distinct accents, and you can skip between each segment by clicking the arrows beneath the portraits.

    Its creator positions the site as social commentary on audio deepfakes and upcoming technologies that may undermine trust in media in the near future. "This project aims to raise awareness about the ease of using tools for synthesizing a real voice," Miceli writes on the site. "Right now, any motivated fool can do this with a laptop in their bedroom."

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      Fake Joe Rogan interviews fake Steve Jobs in an AI-powered podcast

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Tuesday, 11 October, 2022 - 22:23

    AI-generated illustration of three Steve Jobs faces.

    Enlarge / Which Steve Jobs is the real one? (credit: Ars Technica)

    A voice synthesis company based in Dubai published a fictional podcast interview between Joe Rogan and Steve Jobs using realistic voices digitally cloned from both men. It takes place during the "first episode" of a purported podcast series called "Podcast.ai," created by Play.ht, which sells voice synthesis services.

    In the interview, you first hear a replication of Rogan's voice created by voice cloning technology similar to that which we've covered before on Ars. Deep learning technology has allowed AI models to replicate distinctive voices with a high degree of accuracy, such as in the case of Darth Vader in Disney's Obi-Wan Kenobi TV series.

    To achieve the effect, someone must first train the AI model on existing samples of the voice that will be cloned. Rogan is a prime target for AI voice training by deep learning models because ample quantities of his isolated voice exist on his podcasts. In fact, The Verge covered a PR stunt by an AI company called Dessa synthesizing Rogan in 2019.

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      Darth Vader’s voice will be AI-generated from now on

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Monday, 26 September, 2022 - 15:21 · 1 minute

    An illustration of Darth Vader melting into pixels.

    Enlarge / As James Earl Jones retires, Darth Vader's voice will come courtesy of voice-cloning software called Respeecher. (credit: Lucasfilm / Benj Edwards)

    During the creation of the Obi-Wan Kenobi TV series, James Earl Jones signed off on allowing Disney to replicate his vocal performance as Darth Vader in future projects using an AI voice-modeling tool called Respeecher, according to a Vanity Fair report published Friday.

    Jones, who is 91, has voiced the iconic Star Wars villain for 45 years, starting with Star Wars: Episode IV—A New Hope in 1977 and concluding with a brief line of dialog in 2019's The Rise of Skywalker. "He had mentioned he was looking into winding down this particular character,” said Matthew Wood, a supervising sound editor at Lucasfilm, during an interview with Vanity Fair. “So how do we move forward?”

    The answer was Respeecher , a voice cloning product from a company in Ukraine that uses deep learning to model and replicate human voices in a way that is nearly indistinguishable from the real thing. Previously, Lucasfilm had used Respeecher to clone Mark Hamill's voice for The Mandalorian , and the company thought the same technology would be ideal for a major appearance of Darth Vader that would require dozens of lines of dialog. Working from archival recordings of Jones, Respeecher created a voice model that could be "performed" vocally by another actor using the company's speech-to-speech technology.

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      With Koe Recast, you can change your voice as easily as your clothing

      news.movim.eu / ArsTechnica · Thursday, 8 September, 2022 - 16:24

    A colorful waveform that actually has nothing to do with Koe: Recast.

    Enlarge / A colorful waveform dramatically swirls through latent space, seeking kawaii. (credit: Getty Images )

    Thanks to a web demo of a new AI tool called Koe Recast, you can transform up to 20 seconds of your voice into different styles, including an anime character, a deep male narrator, an ASMR whisper, and more. It's an eye-opening preview of a potential commercial product currently undergoing private alpha testing.

    Koe Recast emerged recently from a Texas-based developer named Asara Near , who is working independently to develop a desktop app with the aim of allowing people to change their voices in real time through other apps like Zoom and Discord. "My goal is to help people express themselves in any way that makes them happier," said Near in a brief interview with Ars.

    Several demos on the Koe website show altered clips of Mark Zuckerberg talking about augmented reality with a female voice, a deep male narrator voice, and a high-pitched anime voice, all powered by Recast.

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