AI created a replica of woman's voice after illness took it away (2024)

The voice Alexis “Lexi” Bogan had before last summer was exuberant.

She loved to belt out Taylor Swift and Zach Bryan ballads in the car. She laughed all the time — even while corralling misbehaving preschoolers or debating politics with friends over a backyard fire pit. In high school, she was a soprano in the chorus.

Then that voice was gone.

Doctors in August removed a life-threatening tumor lodged near the back of her brain. When the breathing tube came out a month later, Bogan had trouble swallowing and strained to say “hi” to her parents. Months of rehabilitation aided her recovery, but her speech is still impaired. Friends, strangers and her own family members struggle to understand what she is trying to tell them.

In April, the 21-year-old got her old voice back. Not the real one, but a voice clone generated byartificial intelligencethat she can summon from a phone app. Trained on a 15-second time capsule of her teenage voice — sourced from a cooking demonstration video she recorded for a high school project — her synthetic but remarkably real-sounding AI voice can now say almost anything she wants.

She types a few words or sentences into her phone and the app instantly reads it aloud.

“Hi, can I please get a grande iced brown sugar oat milk shaken espresso,” said Bogan’s AI voice as she held the phone out her car’s window at a Starbucks drive-thru.

Experts have warnedthat rapidly improving AI voice-cloning technology can amplify phone scams, disruptdemocratic electionsand violate the dignity of people — living or dead — who never consented to having their voice recreated to say things they never spoke.

It’s been used to producedeepfake robocallsto New Hampshire voters mimicking President Joe Biden. In Maryland,authorities recently chargeda high school athletic director with using AI to generate a fake audio clip of the school’s principal making racist remarks.

But Bogan and a team of doctors at Rhode Island’s Lifespan hospital group believe they’ve found a use that justifies the risks. Bogan is one of the first people — the only one with her condition — who have been able to recreate a lost voice with OpenAI’s new Voice Engine. Some other AI providers, such as the startup ElevenLabs, have tested similar technology for people with speech impediments and loss — including a lawyer who now uses her voice clone in the courtroom.

“We’re hoping Lexi’s a trailblazer as the technology develops,” said Dr. Rohaid Ali, a neurosurgery resident at Brown University’s medical school and Rhode Island Hospital. Millions of people with debilitating strokes, throat cancer or neurogenerative diseases could benefit, he said.

“We should be conscious of the risks, but we can’t forget about the patient and the social good,” said Dr. Fatima Mirza, another resident working on the pilot. “We’re able to help give Lexi back her true voice and she’s able to speak in terms that are the most true to herself.”

Mirza and Ali, who are married, caught the attention of ChatGPT-maker OpenAI because of their previous research project at Lifespan using the AI chatbot to simplify medical consent forms for patients. The San Francisco company reached out while on the hunt earlier this year for promising medical applications for its new AI voice generator.

Bogan was still slowly recovering from surgery. The illness started last summer with headaches, blurry vision and a droopy face, alarming doctors at Hasbro Children’s Hospital in Providence. They discovered a vascular tumor the size of a golf ball pressing on her brain stem and entangled in blood vessels and cranial nerves.

“It was a battle to get control of the bleeding and get the tumor out,” said pediatric neurosurgeon Dr. Konstantina Svokos.

The 10-hour length of the surgery coupled with the tumor’s location and severity damaged Bogan’s tongue muscles and vocal cords, impeding her ability to eat and talk, Svokos said.

“It’s almost like a part of my identity was taken when I lost my voice,” Bogan said.

The feeding tube came out this year. Speech therapy continues, enabling her to speak intelligibly in a quiet room but with no sign she will recover the full lucidity of her natural voice.

“At some point, I was starting to forget what I sounded like,” Bogan said. “I’ve been getting so used to how I sound now.”

Whenever the phone rang at the family’s home in the Providence suburb of North Smithfield, she would push it over to her mother to take her calls. She felt she was burdening her friends whenever they went to a noisy restaurant. Her dad, who has hearing loss, struggled to understand her.

Back at the hospital, doctors were looking for a pilot patient to experiment with OpenAI’s technology.

“The first person that came to Dr. Svokos’ mind was Lexi,” Ali said. “We reached out to Lexi to see if she would be interested, not knowing what her response would be. She was game to try it out and see how it would work.”

Bogan had to go back a few years to find a suitable recording of her voice to “train” the AI system on how she spoke. It was a video in which she explained how to make a pasta salad.

Her doctors intentionally fed the AI system just a 15-second clip. Cooking sounds make other parts of the video imperfect. It was also all that OpenAI needed — an improvement over previous technology requiring much lengthier samples.

They also knew that getting something useful out of 15 seconds could be vital for any future patients who have no trace of their voice on the internet. A brief voicemail left for a relative might have to suffice.

When they tested it for the first time, everyone was stunned by the quality of the voice clone. Occasional glitches — a mispronounced word, a missing intonation — were mostly imperceptible. In April, doctors equipped Bogan with a custom-built phone app that only she can use.

“I get so emotional every time I hear her voice,” said her mother, Pamela Bogan, tears in her eyes.

“I think it’s awesome that I can have that sound again,” added Lexi Bogan, saying it helped “boost my confidence to somewhat where it was before all this happened.”

She now uses the app about 40 times a day and sends feedback she hopes will help future patients. One of her first experiments was to speak to the kids at the preschool where she works as a teaching assistant. She typed in “ha ha ha ha” expecting a robotic response. To her surprise, it sounded like her old laugh.

She’s used it at Target and Marshall’s to ask where to find items. It’s helped her reconnect with her dad. And it’s made it easier for her to order fast food.

Bogan’s doctors have started cloning the voices of other willing Rhode Island patients and hope to bring the technology to hospitals around the world. OpenAI said it is treading cautiously in expanding the use of Voice Engine, which is not yet publicly available.

A number of smaller AI startups already sell voice-cloning servicesto entertainment studiosor make them more widely available. Most voice-generation vendors say they prohibit impersonation or abuse, but they vary in how they enforce their terms of use.

“We want to make sure that everyone whose voice is used in the service is consenting on an ongoing basis,” said Jeff Harris, OpenAI’s lead on the product. “We want to make sure that it’s not used in political contexts. So we’ve taken an approach of being very limited in who we’re giving the technology to.”

Harris said OpenAI’s next step involves developing a secure “voice authentication” tool so that users can replicate only their own voice. That might be “limiting for a patient like Lexi, who had sudden loss of her speech capabilities,” he said. “So we do think that we’ll need to have high-trust relationships, especially with medical providers, to give a little bit more unfettered access to the technology.”

Bogan has impressed her doctors with her focus on thinking about how the technology could help others with similar or more severe speech impediments.

“Part of what she has done throughout this entire process is think about ways to tweak and change this,” Mirza said. “She’s been a great inspiration for us.”

While for now she must fiddle with her phone to get the voice engine to talk, Bogan imagines an AI voice engine that improves upon older remedies for speech recovery — such as the robotic-sounding electrolarynx or a voice prosthesis — in melding with the human body or translating words in real time.

She’s less sure about what will happen as she grows older and her AI voice continues to sound like she did as a teenager. Maybe the technology could “age” her AI voice, she said.

For now, “even though I don’t have my voice fully back, I have something that helps me find my voice again,” she said.

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AI created a replica of woman's voice after illness took it away (2024)

FAQs

AI created a replica of woman's voice after illness took it away? ›

Alexis Bogan, 21, emerged from brain surgery last year unable to speak fluently and felt like she lost part of her identity. Working with a team of Rhode Island doctors, she is now able to summon a clone of her voice generated by artificial intelligence from an app on her phone.

Can AI replicate your voice? ›

AI voice cloning, also known as voice synthesis or voice mimicry, is a technology that uses machine learning to simulate a specific person's voice. This technology requires a certain amount of voice data to analyze and learn the unique vocal characteristics of the individual.

What is the AI that mimics voice? ›

OpenAI is releasing Voice Engine, which uses a sample audio clip of someone speaking to create an AI-generated version of their voice.

What is the AI voice thing? ›

AI voices are computer-generated voices that mimic human speech through deep learning artificial intelligence techniques like computer concatenative programming language and statistical parametric synthesis to create customizable voices based on gender, age, accent, and other emotional characteristics.

What is the best AI voice clone? ›

3) Murf AI

Next on our list of the best AI voice cloning software is ​​Murf AI, an all-in-one AI tool that not only converts text into lifelike speech but also excels at voice cloning and collaborative editing.

Is AI voice cloning illegal? ›

The FCC announced the unanimous adoption of a Declaratory Ruling that recognizes calls made with AI-generated voices are "artificial" under the Telephone Consumer Protection Act (TCPA).

What are the dangers of AI voices? ›

One of the most pressing concerns is the spread of disinformation and fake news. With AI-generated voices, malicious actors can create convincing audio recordings of public figures saying things they never actually said, leading to widespread confusion, distrust, and social unrest.

Which AI imitates famous voices? ›

A List of Free AI Celebrity Voice Generators
GeneratorsHighlight Key Features
VidnozExcellent voice cloning
CleVoiceVoice effects
Media.ioOutstanding voice recorder
MusicfyExtensive library
6 more rows
May 2, 2024

What is the most realistic female voice changer? ›

What is the best voice changer to sound like a girl? For real-time voice changing, Voicemod is an excellent option. For the most realistic female voice over options, Speechify Voice Over Studio is the best.

How do I delete voice AI? ›

How to delete Voice.AI
  1. Open the “Start” menu and go to the “Control panel.”
  2. Select “Programs” > “Programs and features.”
  3. Locate Voice.AI, right-click, and select “Uninstall.” Then, follow the on-screen instructions.
Dec 8, 2023

Why does AI have female voices? ›

Users feel more comfortable interacting with female voices due to the traditional connotations associated with women's care-giving and assistance roles in our society. That is why AI uses these feminine characteristics to make its products more human,” Bureau says by phone.

How to tell if a voice is AI? ›

Much like images, there are specialized tools for identifying AI-generated audio, such as AI Voice Detector and Voice Classifier for Detecting AI Voices. However, these tools are still evolving and less effective than human ears. Most people can readily detect unnatural aspects in AI-generated speech.

What is the AI voice app everyone is using? ›

Speechify is the #1 AI Voice Over Generator. Create human quality voice over recordings in real time. Narrate text, videos, explainers – anything you have – in any style. Looking for our Text to Speech Reader?

Can AI mimic someone's voice? ›

Due to the recent advances in AI technology, software can clone a voice from a very small audio sample. Voice cloning can mimic the voice of your boss to instruct you to wire funds for a project and you make the transfer, not knowing it was a fake call.

Is there an app that can mimic someone's voice? ›

Voice AI is a cutting-edge AI app designed for converting text into lifelike speech. With Voice AI, you can create exceptionally realistic audio and video from any text input. You can also create AI Music covers from any songs, using your own voice or the voice of other characters.

Is replica ai voice free? ›

Yes, Replica Voice offers a free trial wherein users get 30 minutes of free voice credit to get started.

Can AI replicate humans? ›

While AI can simulate empathetic responses by recognising patterns in emotional expression, it lacks the genuine emotional understanding humans possess. This limitation is significant in roles requiring deep emotional intelligence.

How many words does AI need to copy your voice? ›

Depending on the service, the voice cloning process might start with you reciting 50 predetermined sentences or uploading a clip of you saying anything at all. Some services will ask for hours of audio to train their AI, while others will boast about needing just 5 seconds.

Can you use AI to change your voice? ›

AI voice changers are versatile tools used in various fields, including gaming, for character voices, in content creation for unique narrative voices, and in marketing for diverse and engaging voiceovers.

Can AI speak like humans? ›

Conversational AI can communicate like a human by recognizing speech and text, understanding intent, deciphering different languages, and responding in a way that mimics human conversation.

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