News
Amazon to introduce a new Alexa feature to mimic anyone’s voice
Amazon has recently unveiled that it’s working on a new mimicry feature of its voice assistant Alexa that will be able to mimic any human’s voice, dead or alive, using less than a minute of recorded audio.
The release date is still unknown.
During the company’s Re: Mars conference Wednesday, June 22, 2022, in Las Vegas, Amazon’s senior vice president, and head scientist Rohit Prasad demonstrated the feature using a video of a child asking an Amazon device, “Alexa, can Grandma finish reading me The Wizard of Oz?”
Prasad said that the goal is to “make the memories last” after “so many of us have lost someone we love” during the pandemic. “While A.I. can’t eliminate that pain of loss, it can make the memories last,” Prasad added.
However, Amazon’s new tech seems equally problematic and raises fears; since it will be used for deepfakes, criminal scams, or other outrageous purposes.
That’s a nice thought; presenter Rohit Prasad, SVP and Head Scientist, Alexa AI, notes that “we’re living in the golden era of AI.” But the technology presents various potential issues, particularly with scammers and deep fakes. Also, there doesn’t seem to be any protection against someone using a voice without consent.
The new voice mimicry technology
Prasad’s presentation was based on Amazon’s exploratory text-to-speech (TTS) research, which the company has been exploring using recent technological advancements. “We’ve learned to produce a high-quality voice with far fewer data versus recording in a professional studio,” according to an Amazon spokesperson.
The voice mimicry feature is currently in development, and the company did not disclose when it intends to roll it out to the public.
Prasad said that the new voice speech pattern technology will need only “less than a minute of recorded audio” to produce a high-quality voice, which is possible “by framing the problem as a voice conversion task and not a speech generation path.”
The new technology might one day become ubiquitous in shoppers’ lives, and Prasad noted it could be used to build trust between users and their Amazon devices.
“One thing that surprised me the most about Alexa is the companionship relationship we have with it. In this companionship role, human attributes of empathy and effect are key for building trust,” he said.
The new voice mimicry feature conjures fears
While the new mimicry feature may be innovative, it conjures fears in some—including in companies that work in the field—that it could be used for outrageous purposes.
- Microsoft, which also created voice mimicry technology to help people with impaired speech, restricted which segments of its business could use the technology on fears it would enable deep political fakes. Microsoft’s chief responsible A.I. officer, Natasha Crampton, told Reuters.
- The new feature is also stoking worries online:
“Remember when we told you deepfakes would increase the mistrust, alienation, & epistemic crisis already underway in this culture? Yeah, that. That times a LOT,” said Twitter user @wolven, whose bio identifies him as Damien P. Williams, a Ph.D. researcher in algorithms, values, and bias.
- Some fear the easy way scammers could use the technology for their benefit.
- Mike Butcher, the editor of TechCrunch’s ClimateTech, noted, “Alexa mimicking a dead family member sounds like a recipe for serious psychological damage.”
- Others advised people to stop buying the device altogether.
News
Putin, Obama war on social media starts with unfriend on Facebook
New stage of the cold war, is it?
The Social media war between Putin and Obama started with UnFriend, this is the action taken by Russian President Vladimir Putin to end the Facebook diplomacy with American president Barack Obama.
The unfriending comes after an official White House update about the possibility of a US-Syrian war. President Putin revealed that Obama’s updates about the Congressional debate on a possible war with Syria have annoyed him.
After unfriending, President Putin update status on profile “Something I should have done a long time ago”
Also, He said to Russia’s Pravda News Service “President Assad and I, we are the Facebook friends. We like the same pages, we share pictures of cute women and all that. Obama needs to lighten up on there, it’s not for serious stuff,”
President Obama’s latest posts about the possibility of the war in Syria have been reported by someone and he received a warning from Facebook that he will be prevented from posting on his profile for 24 hours.
He has also commented “Really, Putin needs to grow up. If he didn’t like that [post], he could have just hid it from his news feed instead of creating all this Facebook drama,”
JOE BIDEN “Vice President of the United States” announced to reports that President Obama has signed into his Twitter account to unfollow Putin.
The turmoil generated between Putin and Obama over their dispute on the Syrian crisis. Expanded to reach the social networks
Putin and Obama on social Networks
The question now is, are we witnessing a new stage of the cold war between the two countries, will they continue the war online instead of the military tactics and old spy war?
It’s obvious that social media is really changing the game in everything, and now it’s taking over on a very high level.
Keep an eye on Digital Boom and we will keep you posted with more news and updates on the cold war and even more…
News
Amr Diab Gets Hacked on Twitter
Amr Diab’s Facebook page has announced that his twitter account has been hijacked by anonymous and now tweeting political.
Update: Amr Diab’s Facebook Page announced that “Amr Diab’s Twitter account has been restored successfully and you can follow Amr’s tweets normally now”
Amr Diab got hacked on Twitter
On Thursday 9th of Jan, Amr Diab’s Facebook page announced that Amr Diab’s Twitter account has been hacked by anonymous and now tweeting politics!
Amr Abdul-Basset Abdul-Azeez Diab (born 11 October 1961) is an Egyptian singer and composer of pop music. He was awarded the World Music Award for Best Selling Middle East Artist, three times: 1998 for the album “Nour El Ain”, 2002 for the album “Aktrr Wahid Byhbak 2001” and 2007 for the album “El Lillady”. Amr Diab also won The African Music Awards 2009, Big Apple Music Awards; Life Achievements Awards: Best Singer of The Year in 2009, and Best Male Act in African Music Awards 2010.
He is known as the Father of Mediterranean Music He has created his own style which is often termed “Mediterranean Music” or “Mediterranean Sound”, a blend of Western and Egyptian rhythms.
In The Mediterranean in Music, David Cooper and Kevin Dawe referred to his music as “the new breed of Mediterranean music”.According to author Michael Frishkopf, Amr Diab has produced a new concept of Mediterranean music, especially in his international hit, “Nour El Ain”.
In his analysis of The Very Best of Amr Diab album, Victor W. Valdivia of All music said: “His music melded traditional Arabic sounds and textures with Western rhythms and instruments. The mesh was dubbed Mediterranean music, and The Very Best of Amr Diab displays Diab’s superb skill in creating it.”
In 1997, he won three awards at the Annual Arabic Festival: one for Best Video, for Best Song, and for Best Artist of the Year. Diab received a Triple Platinum Award for the sales of Nour El Ain and a World Music Award in Monaco.
After the success of the previously shared overall analysis of Sherine’s new album “Ana Keter” and her social media presence, we decided to fulfill your requests with more details and additional insights.
The report is from Jan 15 through Jan 31, 2014; however, starting Feb, we noticed that Sherine’s team has enhanced and developed how they engage with fans on Facebook.
Still, there’s more to do; please review the slides below to know what exactly they are missing with recommendations.
Check out the report:
Key take-outs in 15 days after the launch:
- Album gained 11 million views in 2 weeks on YouTube
- YouTube Channel subscribers boosted by 90K subscribers in 15 days out of 127K total subscribers overtime
- Buzz reached 15K tweets/RTs since the launch on Twitter
- How do people talk about the album/Sherine on Twitter?
- People are sharing songs from YouTube & SoundCloud
- +90% positive sentiment on Twitter
- Sherine’s Twitter account is excellent at spreading the news about the album’s success.
- People are tweeting the song’s lyrics.
- Sarcastic tweets about Sherine & few songs (regular) - Almost zero negativity about the album
- Album teasers on Facebook created credibility for Sherine’s page, reflected in the page results after the album’s launch in the next 15 days with 92K Interactions & 312K New Likes.
- The album received tremendous engagement on the launching date of Jan 15. However, no posts for four days after the launch negatively affected the interactions.
Recommendations:
Sherine Abdel Wahab’s Facebook page would have received double or maybe triple new likes and interactions if the improved posts’ quality; please find below the points taken:
- Long updates with no extra value-added will lead to losing your fans’ interest
- The text-only format isn’t preferred, as it is well-known that they generate less reach than other content (Facebook announcement)
- A call to action is essential to generate leads & increase engagement
- Each post has to have its visual, audio, or video so you can attract/engage your audiences
- Understand the situation and act upon it, always be relevant to the time and avoid posting irrelevant content at the wrong time.
- Revise the tone of voice in future activities.
To recap - Overall performance is average to good - Enhance your content formatting - Improve the tone of voice on all networks - Be creative to engage your fans better - Be Consistent - Start your SoundCloud account.
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