Intervie

Startups like Alethea AI, Genies, and Possible Reality fall into a separate category of synthetic media generation. From only a few images, their tools can generate high-fidelity, expressive, and photorealistic avatars. Possible Reality is leveraging its technology to turn pictures of people into 3D avatars inside video games and virtual worlds. And Genies is generating cartoon-like 2D avatars of celebrities for social media.

Synthetic media platforms provide different capabilities depending on their focus. For example, Synthesia allows customers to pick from a range of “voice avatars” and create voiceovers straight from a script, with one or many voices based on style, gender, and production type. On the other hand, Amazon pairs customers with its engineers to build AI-generated voices representing certain personas.

As R&D refines the technology and it becomes more scalable, media synthesis is morphing from a novelty into an expanding market. Companies like Amazon, Microsoft, Papercup, Deepdub, and Synthesia have created projects such as ad campaigns featuring an AI-generated Snoop Dogg and David Beckham’s voice translated into nearly a dozen languages. They’ve also partnered with news organizations including Sky News, Discovery, and Reuters to develop prototypes for automated news and sports reports.

The rise of synthetic media has prompted concerns about deepfakes, or AI-generated media used for fraud and other criminal activities. Ethical questions abound — the voice in Roadrunner was created without Bourdain’s permission. But if used responsibly, synthetic media has the potential to cut costs in while enabling actors to focus on more interesting work.

Synthetic media, or likenesses and voices generated by AI, has nearly crossed the uncanny valley. Earlier this month, Sonantic, a U.K.-based firm that clones voices for actors and studios, released a recording of an AI-generated voice modeled after the actor Val Kilmer. A mimicry of Kilmer’s natural voice, which he lost after a throat cancer surgery in 2015, closely mirrors the intonation of the actor.

Founders like Ahmed think that the pros outweigh the potential cons. As he told VentureBeat in a recent interview, “We set out to build a product that helps creatives get over the hurdle of crafting audio content. With more audio content being produced year after year — smart speakers … AirPods, podcasts, audiobooks, and digital characters in virtual and augmented reality — there is a large and growing need for fast and accurate voice cloning.”