If you've been following our journey, you may already know that we've launched some interesting projects with large Hollywood studios and the NFL. You may not know, however, that we've also started working with YouTubers to help them scale content creation through voice synthesis.
The competition for an audience pushes video bloggers to constantly invent something new. Today, the YouTube vlogging trend is shifting towards digital humans. Because of this, a synthetic video identity requires a unique voice. Thus, YouTubers are on the hunt for tools that speed up and reduce the production costs for these types of content.
Let's look at how AI voice cloning technology can help video bloggers getting started in synthetic media.
What is 'voice synthesis'?
In short, voice synthesis is a technology that allows you to clone the voice of a real person and generate an unlimited amount of audio content using it. Voice synthesis can work in both text-to-speech (TTS) and speech-to-speech (STS) methods.
The TTS means you write a script which is then 'read' by the machine in the voice that has been cloned. Respeecher is an STS system, i.e., we enable one person (a source voice) to speak in the voice of another person (a target voice).
Ideally, we'd require around 60 minutes of solid recordings for a target voice as well as a source voice to further generate unlimited audio content.
Since Respeecher receives numerous requests from YouTubers for synthesizing celebrity voices, there are a few things we'd like to mention up front. We always request permission from the owners of the voices we clone. According to our ethics policy, we need permission to use someone's voice from that person/family/estate. Before proceeding with cloning, if the voice is of a historical figure, we ask our lawyers to manually check whether the voice resides in the public domain.
Here are just a couple of the most common use cases of voice synthesis:
- Cloning voices for films or TV shows.
- Creating unique character voices in game development.
- Cloning voices for a commercial or digital ad.
- Making the tedious, expensive dubbing process faster and easier.
What does voice synthesis have to do with VTubers?
First, familiarize yourself with who VTubers are and why they are so popular. Check out our in-depth article that covers the AI content generation technology behind the creation of extravagant video avatars.
In short, without the ability to generate a unique voice for your character, you will not create a complete character image. Most of the VTuber characters today are anime, fantasy, or frankly, comedic fantasy characters.
Sometimes there is one voice actor doing the acting for multiple characters (female and male). In this case, the ability to synthesize unique voices leads to unlimited possibilities for content creation. One and the same person can act as several characters, speak with their own voice, and the AI then carefully transforms it into a character's voice.
In addition to helping VTubers, voice cloning technology can make life easier for YouTube content creators. Here's how.
How voice synthesis helps YouTubers overcome their worst enemies
1. Burnout
If you follow any popular YouTuber, from Marques Brownlee to Jimmy Donaldson, you know these guys never take a break. While not always noticeable to viewers, burnout has a considerable impact on the health and motivation of video bloggers.
AI voice cloning can not replace a blogger in a video frame, but if you watch many third-person video reviews, it can ultimately save you from studio work for a while.
Any member of your team can dub audio content and then have their voice easily cloned to match yours. The best part is that all this can be done while you enjoy a well-deserved seaside vacation.
2. Lack of time and resources to produce new content
Managers of large YouTube projects know that their audience is ready to consume significantly more content than they can afford to release. To a large extent, restrictions on production are explained by the fact that a channel is tied to one or two hosts. What can we do?
We need to eat and sleep, and there are only 24 hours in a day. As with burnout, voice cloning services can help bring a large team together for content production. This is because production teams no longer have to depend on a voice actor’s physical presence in a studio.
3. Running out of video ideas
This is perhaps one of the main problems for those who run YouTube channels. How else to surprise an audience? - it is the central question behind a channel's success.
Speaking about speech synthesis, we mentioned that a third party is now able to speak using the voice of a YouTuber. Remember that the host of a channel can speak using the voices of other people as well. Imagine a famous vlogger suddenly starts talking in the voice of an equally famous YouTuber from another channel.
Or, for example, they begin to speak in the voice of a movie hero. We'll just leave you with these thoughts and the AI content generation opportunities they give way to.
Conclusion
As you can see, VTubers are not the only ones who can benefit from using machine learning and AI technologies. If you run a YouTube channel and are interested in the prospect of using voice cloning in your work, contact us today.
Respeecher cooperates with both large Hollywood studios and popular YouTube stars. We also recently launched our own Voice Marketplace, making the AI voice licensing process more accessible and lowering the barriers to entry for even the smaller video studios.
