Computers are already able to play chess games and they became unbeatable opponents; we let them read our texts and they started to write. They also learned to paint and retouch photographs. Did anyone doubt that artificial intelligence would be able to do the same with speeches and music?
Google’s research division has presented AudioLM, a framework for generating high-quality audio that remains consistent over the long term. To do this, it starts with a recording of just a few seconds in length, and is able to prolong it in a natural and coherent way. What is remarkable is that it achieves this without being trained with previous transcriptions or annotations even though the generated speech is syntactically and semantically correct Moreover, it maintains the identity and prosody of the speaker to such an extent that the listener is unable to discern which part of the audio is original and which has been generated by an artificial intelligence.
The examples of this artificial intelligence are striking. Not only is it able to replicate articulation, pitch, timbre and intensity, but it is able to input the sound of the speaker’s breathing and form meaningful sentences. If it does not start from a studio audio, but from one with background noise, AudioLM replicates it to give it continuity. More samples can be heard on the AudioLM website. Read more
