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Generative AI has the flexibility to generate all varieties of content material together with textual content, artwork, photographs, and even speech.
The AI startup, ElevenLabs, has supported text-to-speech technology and voice cloning since its beta launch in January and has collected over a million registered customers.
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On Tuesday, ElevenLabs introduced the closing of a $19 million greenback Sequence A spherical, in addition to some main updates to the platform, together with ones to handle its largest controversy.
Since its launch, Elevenlabs’ voice-generating know-how has had each constructive and detrimental implications.
A number of the constructive makes use of, as delineated by ElevenLabs, embrace “impartial authors creating audiobooks, builders voicing characters in video video games, supporting the visually impaired to entry on-line written content material, and powering the world’s first AI radio channel.”
Though these use instances are constructive and advance the enterprise processes of many various industries, there have been equally detrimental purposes.
The voice-cloning device, which takes snippets of an individual’s voice to generate new audio, has been used for nefarious means, making public figures appear to be they’re saying horrible, discriminatory statements.
Weeks after releasing the beta, ElevenLabs instantly took to Twitter to handle the “voice cloning misuse instances.” The corporate steered potential methods to fight the difficulty similar to extra account verification, verifying copyright to the voice, transferring voice cloning to a paid tier, and even manually verifying every request.
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Immediately, it launched to the general public what appears to be the corporate’s resolution to the difficulty, an AI Speech Classifier. This device will have the ability to decipher whether or not uploaded audio comprises AI-generated audio from ElevenLabs or does not.
“The discharge of the AI Speech Classifier is the most recent step within the firm’s push for transparency, and it’s a cornerstone of their dedication to making a secure generative media panorama,” stated ElevenLabs within the launch.
In accordance with a earlier submit asserting the device, the device maintains >99% accuracy in figuring out when the audio is unmodified.
Nevertheless, if the audio underwent Codec or reverb transformations, accuracy drops to over 90% accuracy, and the extra the content material has been processed, the extra the accuracy drops, in response to the discharge.
This device will not stop misuse and should merely assist clear up the confusion after the preliminary hurt is finished. Its effectiveness in fixing the difficulty is questionable, however it’s a small step.
This is not the primary time AI-generation know-how has been misused to focus on public figures. For instance, an AI music generator was in a position to generate a Drake and The Weekend collaboration that sounded actual though neither artist was truly on the observe.
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AI artwork and picture mills have additionally been used to generate pretend, lifelike photographs of public figures doing sure actions. A few of these photographs have been used negatively as political propaganda whereas others have simply been used for leisure functions, such because the meme of Pope Francis in a puffer coat.
Along with the AI Speech Classifier, ElevenLabs additionally introduced the arrival of “Initiatives” to its suite of merchandise.
“Initiatives” is a workflow for enhancing and creating long-form spoken content material accessible for early entry now. It’s meant to function a one-stop store for audio-editing wants and supply a “Google Docs stage of simplicity” to audio creation, in response to the discharge.
The addition of the “Initiatives” function is much like these we now have seen from different creativity platforms, similar to Vimeo, TikTok, and Adobe Categorical. The purpose of all of those platforms is to implement AI in a means that optimizes person workflow and permits for simpler, optimized creation of content material.