A digital version of Albert Einstein with a synthesized voice that has been recreated using AI voice cloning technology has been released by a startup company called Alforithmic.
Alforithmic's AI Einstein voice
The company behind the audio deepfake of Einstein stated that the digital Einstein is intended as a showcase of what will soon be possible with conversational social commerce, as seen on its YouTube trailer.
This means that deepfakes can make historical figures alive again and may be used by different industries soon.
The video engine powering the 3D character rending components of the digital version of Einstein is from another synthesized media company called UneeQ, which is hosting the interactive chatbot version on its website.
Alforithmic stated that it sees educational potential in bringing famous, long-deceased figures to interactive life.
The company added that it worked with an actor to do voice modeling for the chatbot, so there is more than artificial intelligence that is going on behind the scenes.
Matt Lehmann, the COO of Alforithmic, told TechCrunch that this is the next milestone in showcasing the technology to make conversational social commerce possible.
Lehmann added that there are still more than one flaws to iron out and tech challenges to overcome but overall they believe that this is a good way to show where this technology is moving to.
Alforithmic wrote in a blog post about how it recreated Einstein's voice the startup. He said in the blog post that progress is made on one challenging element associated with the chatbot version.
The company stated that it was able to shrink the response time between turning around input text from the computational knowledge engine to its API being able to render a voice response.
It was down from an initial 12 seconds to less than 3. But it is still enough of a lag to ensure the bot can't escape from being a bit tedious.
Protection from deepfakes
Laws that protect people's data and their image present a legal and ethical challenge to creating digital clones of living humans, at least not without asking first.
Historical figures are not around to ask questions about the ethics of their likeness being appropriated for selling stuff. Though licensing rights may still apply, and do, in fact, in the case of Einstein.
Before fessing up to the artist license element of the Einstein voice cloning performance, Lehmann stated that Einstein's rights lie with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, who is a partner in the project.
Lehmann added that they didn't actually clone Einstein's voice but found inspiration in original recordings as well as in movies. The voice actor who helped them modeling Einstein's voice is a huge admirer himself, and the actor's performance captivated the character Einstein very well.
It turns out that the truth about high-tech has a lot of layers. But with deepfakes, it is not the sophistication of the technology that matters so much as the impact the content has and that is always going to depend upon context.
However well or badly the faking is done, how people respond to what they see and hear can shift the whole narrative.
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Written by Sieeka Khan
