AI Voices of Politicians and Influencers Take Over TikTok

[ad_1]

A new trend involving AI voices of celebrities and politicians has taken over TikTok. There are many viral videos of AI-generated dialogue between Joe Biden, Joe Rogan, Donald Trump, and Barack Obama. While most videos are upbeat and funny, some veer off into troubling topics, and can be used to spread disinformation. Loading Something is loading.

Thanks for the note!

Access your favorite topics in a personalized feed while you’re on the go. download the app

Over the weekend, the TikTok account @ai.voicesspeech posted a video featuring algorithmically generated voices for Joe Biden, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and other celebrities playing social deduction game “Among Us,” and compete to see which one of them is the evil impostor.

“The fuck are you talking about? I’m in the Medbay with Biden,” Trump’s voice said, referring to a room in the game. The video ends with Elon Musk’s AI voice admitting that he was the chosen player as the impostor and admitting that the other was an AI version of George Bush.

Clips like this are part of a growing trend on TikTok where creators are using AI to simulate voices and conversations between famous people that they might not have experienced in real life. The idea is to get them to use slang and talk about topics that we might not hear from them. While most of this type of content is trolly and benign, it can also quickly cross into disturbing territory.

In a video in which a fake voice of Biden responds to the recent incident that led the US government to shoot down a balloon operated by China, the AI ​​voice is heard using a racist slur several times.

“I ran up my money and I’m still in the trenches,” the voice also said at one point. “Fuck with me, yeah.”

Most of the most popular clips, however, are quite funny. The most popular format seems to think of high-profile figures playing video games like “FIFA,” “Overwatch,” or “Minecraft.” The videos tend to paste static images of the speakers into the gameplay footage giving the impression that they are all on a voice call playing the game together.

And hearing Obama or Biden use online gaming slang is both funny and surprising because the AI ​​mimics their voices so accurately.

“It’s your boy Joe Rizzler,” AI Biden says in an “Overwatch” clip. “My brother in Christ, try to get some bitches for once and jump on the unskilled heroes.”

While it’s unclear how some of these TikTokers are using AI to mimic popular voices, and many fans in their comment sections are asking, there is technology available to do so. Fortune recently reported that startup ElevenLabs and its voice synthesis platform offer tools to create realistic-sounding audio from human voices. Insider reached out to some of the most popular meme accounts to ask.

In another video that went viral, an AI Obama said he and Biden wanted to join Trump’s “Minecraft” world. After a few minutes of arguing with each other, everyone said they were joining the server. But then Trump immediately pushed Biden into a deep abyss and his character died.

“Look Donald, this is why we didn’t want to play with you last time,” said AI Biden.

“You guys are a bunch of babies, holy shit,” AI Trump replied.

People are not only amused by the impersonation exchange but confused by how accurately their voices are imitated. “AI is still getting good at inflection and emphasis,” said one top comment.

Some accounts dedicated to fake AI voice clips have gained a huge following and millions of views per video. Creator @joerizzington has grown over 160,000 followers since he started posting on Thursday. The hashtag #aivoices has garnered over 53 million cumulative views.

Beyond the disturbing rhetoric that some creators misuse this meme and technology to generate, there is also a very real danger of tricking unwitting viewers into believing fake messages and disinformation.

Last week, TikTok removed a viral video ad in which a digitally-manipulated Joe Rogan appeared to champion a libido-boosting supplement called Alpha Grind. Rogan never advertised the product in real life, and a professor who was also featured in the ad confirmed on Twitter that he doctored it.

Other recent deepfakes, including one of President Biden talking about tanks and another of Hillary Clinton reading transphobic texts, have also caused experts to worry about the blurring of line between real and fake. These higher-stakes examples prompted ElevenLabs to issue its own public statement saying it would try to address “cases of misuse of voice cloning.”

[ad_2]