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Ok_Copy5217 t1_jcunhyo wrote

how did they get Nixon's voice to say new sentences? so does this mean I can upload an audio file of anyone and get it to say whatever I want?

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[deleted] OP t1_jcuny15 wrote

There’s a behind the scenes video, but what they did was they had an AI program watch tons of Nixon speeches to determine what his voice sounded like, had an actor deliver the speech, then had the bot change Nixon’s mouth movements (the visual they used was actually his resignation speech) and change the actor’s voice to Nixon’s.

It was done to raise awareness about deepfakes by creating what would have been a very memorable moment for the entire world that actually never happened.

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otclogic t1_jcupgmk wrote

It needs a massive sample for it to sound convincing. There’s tons of audio deepfakes of Obama, Trump, Biden, and Ben Shapiro playing video games together. Between unserious performances by whoever is speaking their lines and the fact that even with hundreds or thousands of hours of publicly available dialogue it’s still difficult to get publicly available deepfake models to portray those people smoothly and convincingly.

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SendMeNudesThough t1_jcurebu wrote

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GonWithTheNen t1_jcuxjtt wrote

Concerning Nixon's voice: 7 years ago, Adobe showcased a program called Audio Manipulator that could emulate anyone's voice and speech patterns. It only required a 20 minute audio sample of that person's speech.

It's no surprise that the development of this kind of audio replication was going to stick around, and now it's being added to deep fake videos. Interesting tech... and scary at the same time.

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AnthillOmbudsman t1_jcuze6v wrote

OK that video is pretty annoying, it's about 90% the dude making the production. I have no idea how well the AI worked.

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GonWithTheNen t1_jcvaxrq wrote

Interesting info, thanks! I figured back then that the required length of audio samples would be greatly reduced over time. Honestly, with tech's fast advancements, it's less of a surprise and more of what's expected.

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SubstantialPressure3 t1_jcvj5cw wrote

Never heard about it. Probably all it did was feed the "American moon landing was fake" conspiracy.

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Prowland12 t1_jcw0z6q wrote

Good thing they had a lot of audio samples of Nixon talking for some reason.

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aitchnyu t1_jcwjhav wrote

They should have used all the speeches as revealed by xkcd, "when astronauts abscond with craft", "when they encounter aliens" etc

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notsocoolnow t1_jcximnv wrote

Right now people are using Elevenlabs to emulate the voice of Dagoth Ur, a character in the Elder Scrolls IV Morrowind with only a handful of voice lines, to make funny meme videos.

The capability of the AI tool is quite impressive even with small samples, though the small number of available samples does mean people are also depending on that small sample to get an impression of what the character sounds like.

I imagine it would be different for a character with a large number of samples (which viewers are familiar with) that you only fed a handful of to the AI.

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GonWithTheNen t1_jd05kbs wrote

Being able to do voice samples "even with small samples" is mind-blowing. Frightening in terms of the possibilities, but mind-blowing.

What I hope all these emulators include is some kind of digital signature (like what Adobe said they'd use) that would detect manipulated audio and the real person's voice.

I mean, emulation seems benign for game-related memes and similar media where any player can open their copy and verify what a voice actor actually said. Other scenarios? Maybe not so much...

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