Meta has unveiled a publicly accessible demo of its new Audiobox generative AI project, which can mimic your voice using only seconds of sample audio, after previewing it last month. The technique allows users to generate personalized audio samples based on their own voice and/or text prompts.
As Meta explains:
“Audiobox is Meta’s new audio generation foundation research model.” It can produce voices and sound effects by combining voice inputs with natural language text prompts, making it simple to create personalized audio for a variety of use cases.”
And it’s very excellent, albeit a little strange.
To begin, the Audiobox sample gives you access to a variety of features, such as voice descriptions, sound effect production, audio editing, and more.
The primary example of this application is bespoke audio production based on text cues.
Meta has included a few basic Audiobox test features in this example, including a text-to-speech method that allows you to make bespoke audio depending on any text input.
In the sample, you can only use “Alice” or “Emily” as system voices, but it gives you a sense of what the process can achieve in terms of converting bespoke text into alternate audio streams.
You may also use text prompts to add custom sounds to your sample.
But the most bizarre feature is the ability to create your own voice.
It clearly sounded like me, and I didn’t like it. This, of course, might become a serious issue in terms of possible abuse, and Meta does need you to agree to a number of terms and conditions before using it.
But it’s rather excellent and accurate. It’s uncomfortably close.
It’s the latest in Meta’s expanding suite of generative AI tools, which will be used in a variety of Meta products over the coming year. While Meta is still incorporating security features, it is concerning that it is making such tools more freely available, even with the many terms of service limitations attached.
To be honest, I’m not sure the world is ready for it, and with numerous elections coming up, I can see a broad variety of concerns developing from possible abuse.
However, AI progress is accelerating, and Meta wants to keep up.
If you want to check how well it mimics your voice, you can put it to the test here. Call your partner and play the excerpt down the line to see if they can figure out that it’s not you.
