Artificial Intelligence Voices / AI Voice

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 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 Master Editor^[3] uploaded on October 10, 2021, showing the two biggest free resources: Amazon through its AWS service and Microsoft through its Azure service (shown below).

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).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References