At Home with Tech

Thanks to the rapid evolution of AI technologies, anyone can now clone their own voice and generate a reasonable duplicate through text-to-speech software.

The Benefits and Risks of Voice Cloning

If you market your voice professionally, then cloning your voice could bring certain benefits as well as inevitable risk. (Who needs to pay you for your actual voiceover work when a good AI copy will do?)

And of course, this topic also brings ethical concerns regarding unauthorized use.

But for most of the population who are hopefully not on the radar of bad actors, I think about whether there’s any value to cloning your voice. How might that help you in your journey through life… or beyond?

Preservation of your Legacy

One benefit could simply be the preservation of your own voice for legacy purposes, much like the value an old family photo for archival use.

On the other hand, wouldn’t that be a little creepy for a family member to be able to generate more of your voice after you’re gone?

Ask ChatGPT

So, I decided to interview ChatGPT to delve into this issue. For the purposes of this exercise, I first cloned my own voice using “Instant Voice Cloning” from Eleven Labs, the software company that offers natural-sounding speech synthesis. I then assigned an Eleven Labs’ virtual voice to play a fictional ChatGPT expert. 

Finally, we were ready for our little chat. Here’s our audio interview which I created from the ChatGPT-generated transcript. The under four-minute podcast features both my real voice and my cloned voice created through text-to-speech AI. (My previous podcast episode was all me.) And remember, everything about my guest was created by ChatGPT, including her name.

I think the results successfully bend reality…

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