One of many extra sudden merchandise to launch out of the Microsoft Ignite 2023 occasion is a device that may create a photorealistic avatar of an individual and animate that avatar saying issues that the particular person didn’t essentially say.
Known as Azure AI Speech textual content to speech avatar, the brand new characteristic, obtainable in public preview as of right this moment, lets customers generate movies of an avatar talking by importing photographs of an individual they need the avatar to resemble and writing a script. Microsoft’s device trains a mannequin to drive the animation, whereas a separate text-to-speech mannequin — both prebuilt or educated on the particular person’s voice — “reads” the script aloud.
“With textual content to speech avatar, customers can extra effectively create video … to construct coaching movies, product introductions, buyer testimonials [and so on] merely with textual content enter,” writes Microsoft in a weblog publish. “You should utilize the avatar to construct conversational brokers, digital assistants, chatbots and extra.”
Avatars can communicate in a number of languages. And, for chatbot eventualities, they’ll faucet AI fashions like OpenAI’s GPT-3.5 to reply to off-script questions from clients.
Now, there are numerous methods such a device might be abused — which Microsoft to its credit score realizes. (Comparable avatar-generating tech from AI startup Synthesia has been misused to provide propaganda in Venezuela and false information experiences promoted by pro-China social media accounts.) Most Azure subscribers will solely be capable to entry prebuilt — not customized — avatars at launch; customized avatars are presently a “restricted entry” functionality obtainable by registration solely and “just for sure use instances,” Microsoft says.
However the characteristic raises a bunch of uncomfortable moral questions.
One of many main sticking factors within the latest SAG-AFTRA strike was the usage of AI to create digital likenesses. Studios in the end agreed to pay actors for his or her AI-generated likenesses. However what about Microsoft and its clients?
I requested Microsoft its place on corporations utilizing actors’ likenesses with out, within the actors’ views, correct compensation and even notification. The corporate didn’t reply — nor did it say whether or not it might require that corporations label avatars as AI-generated, like YouTube and a rising variety of different platforms.
Private voice
Microsoft seems to have extra guardrails round a associated generative AI device, private voice, that’s additionally launching at Ignite.
Private voice, a brand new functionality inside Microsoft’s customized neural voice service, can replicate a person’s voice in a couple of seconds supplied a one-minute speech pattern as an audio immediate. Microsoft pitches it as a method to create customized voice assistants, dub content material into totally different languages and generate bespoke narrations for tales, audio books and podcasts.
To beat back potential authorized complications, Microsoft’s requiring that customers give “specific consent” within the type of a recorded assertion earlier than a buyer can use private voice to synthesize their voices. Entry to the characteristic is gated behind a registration kind in the interim, and clients should agree to make use of private voice solely in functions “the place the voice doesn’t learn user-generated or open-ended content material.”
“Voice mannequin utilization should stay inside an utility and output should not be publishable or shareable from the appliance,” Microsoft writes in a weblog publish. “[C]ustomers who meet restricted entry eligibility standards preserve sole management over the creation of, entry to and use of the voice fashions and their output [where it concerns] dubbing for movies, TV, video and audio for leisure eventualities solely.”
Microsoft didn’t reply TechCrunch’s questions on how actors may be compensated for his or her private voice contributions — or whether or not it plans to implement any form of watermarking tech in order that AI-generated voices may be extra simply recognized.
For extra Microsoft Ignite 2023 protection:
This story was initially revealed at 8am PT on Nov. 15 and up to date at 3:30pm PT.