Clinton, Obama and Trump just endorsed a scarily accurate AI mimic

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By Matthew Griffin Intelligence and the Senses 7th May 2017

WHY THIS MATTERS IN BRIEF

Artificial intelligence is gaining new skills all the time, and now it’s creating scarily accurate impressions of celebrities.

The Lyre Bird is a unique bird that lives in the Amazon Rainforest because it’s especially skilled at copying the sound of its surroundings. It’s so successful in fact that in the 1990’s it rose to fame as the sad symbol of the decline of the Amazon when it was first heard perfectly copying the noises of the chainsaws and car alarms of the loggers who were busily destroying its habitat. And now it’s probably mimicking the sound of WiFi routers… but that’s a different story.

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Now, a Canadian Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning company, LyreBird, has received ringing sound bytes and endorsements from Donald Trump, Hillary Clinton, and Barack Obama discussing its technology. But it’s not actually them, it’s an AI powered imitation that’s scarily accurate – even if it does sound jerky, but over time, as we recently saw with DeepMind’s own WaveNet Project that’ll vanish.

LyreBird uses machine learning to produce realistic sounding voice audio and it does it by listening to just one minute – a whole minute – of audio. I know, why so long you ask?

By analysing the voices of all three celebrities, and others, the new system was able to re-produce their voices with amazing accuracy. LyreBird works by taking a sample of any voice and by analysing their waveforms and the cues that “make the voice unique,” it then takes these reliable deviations from the platonic ideal of an English voice and tells its voice synthesis component to make those same adjustments to its audio “wave-forms” as those sound curves are generated. By doing this with enough specificity, the voice generated can have not just the general sound or accent of a person, but the quirks and minor tics, as well. And that’s what makes it so accurate.

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However, in the era of fake news, which Facebook are throwing more and more resource at – some of which will undoubtedly be fooled by the new system – some people are questioning the new system’s potential impact on society

It was only a few months ago when I reported on Voco, a new Adobe tool that let’s you do with voice what Photoshop allows you to do with images – basically photoshop voices on demand – and I can’t help thinking that if you combine Voco with LyreBird you’re going to get some awesome audio – and some huge biometric and security problems. Putin declaring war on the world? You could probably create that audio today and we’re only at the beginning of this tech. You get the idea… but just as it could be used for “evil” it could also, like most technologies, be used for great good, for example, it could be used to give people with voice boxes, after they’ve lost their voice boxes to cancer, their real voices back.

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As we say in the futurists game – technology is unbiased, it’s humans who use it for good, or evil… but there is one person who needs to be very, very careful and that’s Alec Baldwin – his Trump impression is awful and he might just find himself getting replaced. Oh the joy, er travesty.

Matthew Griffin / About Author

Described by NASA as a "Walking Encyclopaedia of the Future" and one of the world’s most in demand keynote speakers Matthew Griffin, Founder and Futurist in Chief of the 311 Institute, a global Futures and Deep Futures advisory firm, is a multi-award winning Futurist and strategic foresight expert, author, lecturer, mentor, podcast and YouTube host.

With a distinguished career running global business units at Atos, EMC, and IBM today Matthew helps leaders and titans of industry from all over the world explore the impact of the inter sections of technology, culture, and leadership, then helps them create high performance organisations that can continuously disrupt, outpace, and outthink their competition.

15 times author of the hit series the Codex of the Future series Matthew's ability to identify, track, and explain the impacts of hundreds of emerging technologies and trends on global business, culture, and society has earned him a powerful reputation and a roster of clients that include royal households, world leaders across the G7, G20, and G77, and many of the world's most recognised and exceptional organisations including ABB, Accenture, ABN Amro, Adidas, AON, ARM, BCG, Centrica, Citi Group, Coca Cola, Deloitte, Dentons, Disney, Dow, EY, Google, KPMG, Lego, Microsoft, Legal & General, LinkedIn, Nokia, Paramount, PepsiCo, PWC, Qualcomm, RWE, Samsung, T-Mobile, UBS, Visa, WIRED, WPP and hundreds of others.

Matthew is regularly featured in the global media including the AP, BBC, Bloomberg, CNBC, Discovery, Forbes, Khaleej Times, Telegraph, TIME, ViacomCBS, WIRED, and the WSJ, and his mission is to help organisations create a fair and sustainable future whose benefits are shared by everyone irrespective of their ability, background, or circumstances.