An AI that allows anyone, and in a matter of seconds, to clone the voice of any other person (or, of course, oneself) is beginning to take the Internet by storm. The controversial but popular 4chan forum, without going any further, has been flooded with Audio deepfakes of celebrities like Emma Watson or Joe Rogan filled with violent or pornographic comments.

And all since, this past weekend, access was opened publicly to the ElevenLabs platform, perhaps one of the most significant examples of how far AI-based Technologys dedicated to audio cloning and synthesis have advanced.

Apart from the undeniable realism of its voice synthesis (light years away from canned voices like Loquendo, so popular years ago), the company itself boasts that the audio clips it generates require little or no editingwhich encourages its use in tasks such as dubbing or audiobook production:

AI narrates The Great Gatsby.

Listen to a fragment from the classic by F. Scott Fitzgerald. Narrated by a fully AI-generated voice. No corrections were made. pic.twitter.com/vQdorBjQK6

— ElevenLabs (@elevenlabsio) January 29, 2023

Somebody put order here

Of course, the fact that it does not present none of the safeguards we are used to finding in imaging services to avoid creating certain types of content ‘sensitive’ and/or based on real people.

In a thread posted on Twitter last Monday, ElevenLabs recognized that some of its users were abusing its application: “[observamos] a growing number of cases of misuse of voice cloning”, and warned that they are able to “trace any generated audio back to the user”.

Crazy weekend – thank you to everyone for trying out our Beta platform. While we see our tech being overwhelmingly applied to positive use, we also see an increasing number of voice cloning misuse cases. We want to reach out to Twitter community for thoughts and feedback!

— ElevenLabs (@elevenlabsio) January 30, 2023

Likewise, it has put on the table the possibility of implementing protections such as the User identity verification or manual approval of each request voice cloning. However, its use remains unlimited for now.

we have tried it

When we register for free on the platform, we are granted access to a series of tools. First of all, we will find the simple voice synthesizer that allows us to convert texts to sound files using, in principle, predefined voices in American English.

However, if we make use of the ‘Voice Cloning’ function, we can upload audio with a voice recording to the platform (“it must last more than 1 minute and not contain background noise”, clarifies the website), which will allow us to create a personalized voice from which we can return to the synthesizer and create an audio based on our voice… or anyone else’s.

Voice Cloning Step 1

Step 2

That yes: the service is, for now, optimized for the American English accent; so it is possible that, when generating the audio, you do not finish recognizing yourself in the resulting file.

The classics never die. Although it sounds horrible in American, let me tell you.

That has been our case, after generating a personalized voice based on that of a server: reading Don Quixote in a perfect Kansas accent (up state, down state) has not finished sounding ‘very me’, but US users claim not to suffer from this problem.

The free account only allows create up to five custom voices and synthesize to audio 10,000 characters of text per monthIn addition, the resulting audios are subject to a non-commercial license. There are, from there, several payment options, the cheapest being $22 per month.

Via | The Verge

Image | Based on an original by Jason Rosewell on Unsplash

It is undeniable that Twitch has undergone a great boom in recent years accompanied by the strategies that They have followed different content creators who have attracted a large audience to the platform. But the problem that resides is the great differences that can exist between the English and Spanish-speaking communities, mainly due to the differences in investment by advertisers.

But the great reality is that despite this difference in investment and prestige, the truth is that the Spanish-speaking community is one of the most powerful in terms of growth in the number of viewers and also in number of creators. And this is something that was recently evidenced at the ESLAND Awards where the community gave a big blow to the table.

The Spanish-speaking community is growing at a fast pace

One of the examples that Bloomberg has chosen to express this large Spanish-speaking community is that of Rivers. A streamer who studied engineering in Mexico in 2020 when she started playing Call of Duty on Twitch motivated by her friends. And as they went live, more and more people began to see this girl who wondered if she should spend more time being a streamer and less time studying. Obviously, this is something that she did not like in her family, although in the end it seems that she made the right decision to currently have a live audience of 19,000 viewers on average.

And this is motivated by a substantial increase in interest in the transmission of the Spanish-speaking public. Specifically, between 2019 and 2022, the audience in Spanish multiplied, going from the seventh category to being very close to English in a second position, as Bloomberg has detailed.

But it is not something that is coincidental, but rather it is due precisely to the fact that Latin America has about 80% of people between the ages of 10 and 65 play video games. But the problem in this case is that Latin America does not receive much attention from investors, and it is that it is at the bottom when it comes to investment in digital advertising. It is even believed that this market is considered ‘incipient’. Specifically, the country as a whole is located behind Africa and the Middle East.

Given this boom, from Twitch they have increased their presence in the region with more staff and adding marketing teams, creative partners and sales. But this is something that can be very sad, since currently in the record for viewers on the entire platform, Spanish streamers stand out with Ibai and its Evening of the Year II, and also the successes that many creators in Latin America are reaping. This confirms that Spanish is booming on the social network, although it is not being given the recognition it deserves.

Source | Bloomberg

Last year Wordle surprised us with an addictive word game that captivated millions of people to enter the web every day for a new challenge. After its success, a multitude of clones and games with similar mechanics arose, and the New York Times benefited from the success of the original by acquiring it and adding it to its list of hobbies.

Chronophoto, for its part, proposes a completely different idea, although it is reminiscent of the one mentioned above due to its addictive formula and simple mechanics. And it is that it is a free web game in which all we have to do is guess what year the picture was taken that they present to us

A simple game to guess the year the photos were taken

The game is tremendously simple, and that’s where its popularity comes from. Chronophoto will show you five photos in which you will have to guess what date they were taken. For this you have a bar that you can move from the year 1900 to 2022.

In each photo you will be able to zoom up to a limit, so you can take advantage of elements such as people’s clothing, vehicles or various objects to try to get closer to the correct date. Although there are photographs of more or less historical moments, you will also find day-to-day images, so it will be in the latter where you have to benefit even more from the elements that appear in the photo.

The closer you get to the year the photo was taken, the more points you’ll get, while if you get too far away, you won’t get any points. The maximum score is acquired when you nail the year, thus obtaining a total of 1,000 points.

The points will accumulate as you progress through the round, and at the end you will get a summary with all the points earned.

The best thing about Chronophoto (and the worst) is that once the round of five photos is finished you can start over with different images. Be very careful with this, because we already warn you that it is a truly addictive game.

Unknown creator and a pending authorship issue

At the moment the author (or authors) remains in the shadows, although you can contact them in case you think there is an error in the date of any image. You just have to click on the ‘About’ button.

Another issue that has been discussed in forums is about the intellectual property of the photographs that appear in the game. And it is that according to some point out, they could be images stolen from the internet. This is a problem, since the page does not give credit to the original authors of each photograph and it is surely an issue that must be solved immediately.

At the moment Chronophoto It is completely free and does not include advertising some on the web. Of course, the web does not save the score obtained, so you will have to keep your maximum score to try to beat it the next time you play.