Are kidnappers and con-men a huge under-served market that Google is hoping to serve ? Deep Fake videos not convincing enough to serve the need of fraudsters ?
I am totally against regulating AI but shit like this gives fodder to the other side.
Also allows people uncomfortable with their natural voice, in particular transgender people, to communicate closer to how they wish to be perceived. Or even for someone to use their own natural voice from previous recordings if some temporary or chronic disease/disorder has impaired it.
There are probably a bunch of creative applications - like doing character voices for a D&D session or reading an audiobook. Obviously depends on the preferences of those involved, and many will currently dislike it on the basis of it being AI, but I think over time we'll see the tech integrated in interesting ways.
I imagine the majority of the use will be in entertainment/memes/satire - joining a call with an amusing voice on, or the equivalent of Snapchat's face filters. Not something critical that we couldn't do without, but still a fun application.
I don't see much benefit to kidnappers in this; if you just need to send an anonymous message without much concern about flow and latency, text or traditional TTS is fine.
Heck, I can even see broadcasting uses. Imagine if every on-air personality had good target files made ahead of time, so then when they catch a cold, production runs their lapel mic feed through this, using the "good" target sample, and remove all the congestion and raspiness.
> I am totally against regulating AI but shit like this gives fodder to the other side.
You think anonymity is so universally hated that it's actually bad PR for leaving AI completely unregulated? No other problems with AI that you can think of, and also no good reason why someone should be allowed to be anonymous?
It’s not a desire I ever had. But maybe people are different?
Alternatively, building the solution was so much fun that the question of whether this is a problem that should be solved was never asked.
The second was we got a very enthusiastic video spokesperson but unfortunately she has a very thick non-american accent and this can help us alleviate it.