
Voicemod, based in Valencia, unveiled on Wednesday 20 humanlike characters, spanning from someone in their 20s to an elderly man. The users of the tech – employed now by over 40 million – can switch up their voice to any of the variety of voices available, from a high-pitched female to a deep male.The vocal technology can be incorporated into the social communications app, Discord, so people can converse in another voice during gaming.
Voicemod, an artificial intelligence company located in Valencia, Spain, has just unveiled their "AI humans". These characters allow gamers to modify their voices for video games in real time, and the voices are trained from professional human actors. CEO Jaime Bosch showcased the technology's capabilities with CNBC, altering his natural voice to sound like a 20-something woman or a baritone man.
Apple Mac and Windows PC users can download the Voicemod app to use it as a “virtual microphone” to speak with different personas. The company is powered by talent from leading tech universities in Valencia and Barcelona, and they've specialized in voice synthesis and interactive audio features since 2014. 40 million people have already adopted this technology, and it's a hit with the social app Discord. It seems to be especially popular among shy people, who have written in to say that they now have the ability to socialize.
This is a huge breakthrough in the realm of conversational AI, as it's much more difficult to generate a response in real time. It requires a significant amount of computing power and investment to create and patent the proprietary algorithm models. To provide the necessary funds for the project, Voicemod was able to raise $23 million from Leadwind and Bitkraft Ventures.
Bosch is aware of the potential misuse of this technology, as it could be used to imitate prominent figures or scam people. To combat this, Voicemod is almost finished developing a “watermarking” solution that will be able to detect voices that were generated through the voice-changing tech. The company is also in the process of discussing standardization with other firms to ensure that this technology is safely released. It's expected that laws will soon be implemented for this technology, and Voicemod is prepared to stay ahead of the curve.
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