About

Artificial Intelligence Voices or AI-Generated Voice-Overs refers to the process of using artificial intelligence tools to create text-to-speech clips that are supposed to sound like famous celebrities, public figures or characters from popular culture. Starting in 2020 with Fifteen.ai, AIs' continued usage in generating fake, dubbed dialogue through well-known voices increased throughout the early 2020s as the technology progressed, seeing a notable spike in interest around early 2023 with the release of ElevenAI.

Online History

Fifteen.ai

On March 6th, 2020, MIT released the 15.ai software^[5] it had been working on for the previous two years. It started gaining attention on YouTube and Twitter in the following days as the first viral AI-voice tool. For example, also on March 6th, a video showcasing the newest advancement in AI voice was uploaded to YouTube by the channel Tyler McVicker,^[1] which had GlaDOS AI-generated voice lines. The now-unlisted video received over 128,000 views in three years and helped to prove that the concept had a lot of potential (shown below).

Replica AI

Later that year on November 18th, 2020, Replica Studios then uploaded a video to its YouTube^[2] channel in which they showcased their Replica AI system, designed to be used in games to replace voice actors in Unreal Engine. The video, being viewed over 58,000 times in two years, additionally helped to push the conversation and capabilities forward regarding what AI-voice generators could do or be used for, with voice-over work for small-budget indie titles not needing to be a pain point during development (shown below).

AI Voice YouTube Videos

In 2021, the usage of AI voice for the purpose of voice-overs in YouTube videos started to become more prominent, with AI-generated voices being used primarily in the tutorial and instructional videos to more clearly convey the lesson to the listener without giving away where the creator was originally from or sounds like. This, in turn, spurned the creation of AI-voice-generated video tutorials on how to use AI-voice generation, with the video by the channel @PakistanOnlineBusiness^[3] uploaded on January 22nd, 2023, showing the 5 free AI voice-overs generators to use in YouTube videos

ElevenAI

Fifteen.ai had a large number of memes being made from its voice-generating abilities between 2020 and 2022, but in January 2023, a new voice system caused a viral resurgence in both AI voice-over tools and AI-voice-generated memes, ElevenAI. After completing a Kickstarter for better capabilities and functionality, the service was quickly picked up by 4chan and Reddit in the following weeks after its beta release in late January, with examples such as AI-voice-generated audio of President Joe Biden being a commonly used example^[4] (shown below).

EzDubs (Real-time AI Dubbing)

On January 1st, 2023, the company EzDubs^[6], specialized in real-time AI dubbing, joined the AI tools online environment. One of the features offered by EzDubs is a Twitter bot capable of dubbing videos in several languages in just a few minutes. The bot became popular on the platform around June 2023, helping people to understand the context of viral videos. For example, on June 3rd, 2023, the Twitter page @goleada_info posted a video of YouTuber iShowSpeed getting attacked by football fan during a match in England. Brazilian user @opedrolemes requested the @ezdubs_bot^[7] to dub the video in the Portuguese language, which received 9,000 views and 203 likes in four days. (seen below)

@opedrolemes Done! Here is your Portuguese dub: https://t.co/wRCdh0Yu5H. To dub YouTube videos, use our Chrome extension: https://t.co/NOojBAvkEA pic.twitter.com/7Dq2ofWZck

— EzDubs (@ezdubs_bot) June 3, 2023

Another usage example of the company's Twitter bot was posted on June 6th, 2023, when user @sofiawitchw^[8] asked the bot to dub in Spanish a video of the British streamer playing Minecraft. The Spanish-dubbed version video received 44,700 views and 614 likes in one day.

@sofiawitchw Done! Here is your Spanish dub: https://t.co/2CBFaKNXOz. To dub YouTube videos, use our Chrome extension: https://t.co/NOojBAvkEA pic.twitter.com/e4d3vgP98Z

— EzDubs (@ezdubs_bot) June 6, 2023

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References