Audiobooks have become increasingly popular, with platforms like Spotify even creating dedicated spaces for them. But recording an audiobook is a challenging endeavor, even for seasoned voice actors. Enter the world of AI. Researchers from MIT and Microsoft are collaborating with Project Gutenberg, the world’s largest repository of open-license ebooks, to produce 5,000 AI-narrated audiobooks. These include classics like “Pride and Prejudice” and “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.”

Mark Hamilton, a lead researcher from MIT, shared, “We wanted to create a massive amount of free audiobooks for the community.” Trained on millions of human speech examples, it can mimic various voices, accents, and even languages. Remarkably, it can produce custom voices from just five seconds of audio.

However, challenges persist. Project Gutenberg ebooks, crafted by volunteers, often have inconsistencies. The ultimate goal? Expand the AI-narrated collection to all 60,000 books on Project Gutenberg and possibly translate them.

Currently, these AI-voiced audiobooks are available for free streaming on platforms like Spotify and Apple Podcasts. The technology’s potential is vast, from reading plays with distinct character voices to creating personalized audiobook gifts. Imagine being able to eventually personalize and customize the voice you have read to you.

Visa unveiled a $100 million venture fund dedicated to generative AI startups, marking its entry into a rapidly growing sector that has attracted numerous investors this year. “While much of generative AI so far has been focused on tasks and content creation, this technology… will also meaningfully change commerce in ways we need to understand,” noted Jack Forestell, Visa’s Chief Product and Strategy Officer. The move underscores Visa’s commitment to staying at the forefront of technological advancements and its belief in the transformative potential of generative AI in the commerce landscape.

A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences finds AI-synthesized faces are indistinguishable from real faces and humans actually find them slightly more trustworthy. The results highlight not only the risks of deepfakes, but also a tremendous opportunity for researchers and businesses.

The study looked at three experiments. In the first experiment, 315 participants classified 128 faces taken from a set of 800 as either real or synthesized. Their accuracy rate was 48%, no better than a 50-50 guess.

In a second experiment, 219 new participants were trained on ways to identify deepfakes and given feedback on how to classify faces. This group classified 128 faces taken from the same set of 800 faces – but despite training, the accuracy rate improved to only 59%.

Finally, a third group of 223 participants rated a selection of 128 of the images for trustworthiness on a scale of one (very untrustworthy) to seven (very trustworthy). This group rated synthetic faces a slightly higher average of 4.82, compared with 4.48 for real people.“We found that not only are synthetic faces highly realistic, they are deemed more trustworthy than real faces,” says study co-author Hany Farid, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

The results make clear that humans intuition and discernment alone will not be able to effectively combat deepfakes. Researchers should be proactively focused on countermeasures and other tools and techniques that can help detect deepfakes.

While the results suggest deepfakes can be highly effective when used for nefarious purposes, it also highlights the effectiveness to which marketers can use AI-synthesized faces and tools in promoting their services and products. The fact that humans find AI-synthesized to be more trustworthy than photos of actual humans suggests marketers might be able to leverage this attribute to form a stronger bond between consumers and their marketing message. Already, companies like LG are using synthetic humans to promote their products. The study results also highlights the potential role AI-synthesized humans might play in the metaverse.