Generative AI has had a lot of use ever since it stormed the tech world. From chatbots to media generators, it has an abundance of potential applications. AI-powered voice generator ElevenLabs is one of the most popular platforms so far, and it has come out of its beta phase with more features to offer.
ElevenLabs with New Languages
The company has developed its AI model and is now capable of supporting over 30 languages. The AI tool known for its creation of synthetic voices, can automatically identify languages including Korean, Dutch, Vietnamese, and more.
In addition to generating "emotionally rich" speeches, users can utilize the voice-cloning tool to speak across 30 languages without having to type a single text, which has the potential for a lot of applications in both speech and translations.
ElevenLabs CEO Mati Staniszewski says that the company was started with "a dream of making all content universally accessible in any language and in any voice," according to Tech Crunch. The company did so quickly as the beta was only released in late January this year.
Staniszewski stated that the company's goal was to make human-quality AI voices available in every dialect, adding that their text-to-speech generation tools "help level the playing field and bring top quality spoken audio capabilities to all the creators out there."
Along with former Google employee Piotr Dabkowski, Staniszewski founded ElevenLabs as well. The platform has since gained popularity due to its capabilities, although not all of them are good since the voice generator has been to create threats and other distasteful statements.
Generative AI, while admittedly a very useful tool in content creation, has been used countless times by bad actors. In some cases, the victims have resorted to legal action in order to address the unconsented use of copyrighted and personal property.
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The Dangers of AI-Generated Voice
Voice actors are already not given their dues as it is. Other than being underappreciated, most are also underpaid. AI voice generators come as yet another threat to the voice-acting industry as it puts human workers' jobs at risk.
Jennifer Hale, known for voicing video game characters like Ashe from Overwatch 2 and Kronika in Mortal Kombat 11, expressed that voice actors were "all on the chopping block" and that they have to get up, come together, and fight back, or they're going down.
As mentioned in Gizmodo, Activision Blizzard, one of the biggest game publishers, is already working on AI-assisted voice cloning, which means that voice actors will soon have less labor work cut out for them, which leads to being paid less.
There are already reports of how voice actors are asked to sign away the rights to their voice so that it can be synthesized using generative AI. This is a major threat to the trade since it could replace voice actors entirely.
So far, there are still no regulatory systems and policies that could prevent this from happening. Publishers and developers will opt for this method since it will cost less to use AI for voiceovers than actual people.
Related: Voice Actors Join Protest Against AI at Comic Con 2023
