Designing custom voices with AI

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) in voice design is revolutionizing how we interact with technology and experience audio content. Companies such as ElevenLabs, Respeecher, Microsoft, Google, AWS, MIT CSAIL, and Hume AI are leading the way in this innovation, employing various approaches to create and manipulate voices including prompt-based models, voice cloning, and text-to-speech (TTS) systems. These technologies have the potential to produce highly realistic and expressive synthetic voices that can convey a wide range of emotions and nuances, replicate existing voices with remarkable accuracy, and generate new voices with specific characteristics. However, the development and use of AI voice design systems also raise several ethical considerations including authenticity and deception, privacy and consent, bias and discrimination, legal implications, and job displacement.