How about the ability to listen to an audiobook that is being read aloud by you or your favorite celeb that you have the option to choose? AI startup Speechify will let you do just that. As CNet stated, all that you need to do is import your voice and let AI make a clone of the same. Thereafter, let that voice to read aloud the book you wish to listen to. It’s as simple as that.
There are several celebrities onboard too who have agreed to let their voice be available for AI cloning. From the likes of Snoop Dogg to Gwyneth Paltrow, you can opt to listen to a book read aloud by them. It is this that CEO Cliff Weitzman said sets Speechify apart from the likes of Audible or Spotify. This way, the start-up views itself as an alternative to say Audible or Spotify in that any book can be turned into an audiobook and that too being read aloud by a voice that you choose.
Weitzman said Speechify is built around a program written by him and is based on AI deep learning technology. The same is also known as concatenative text-to-speech which is described as ‘a form of speech generation that taps into pre-recorded samples of speech’. Weitzman said his brother Tyler too helped refine the algorithm which ultimately served as the first version of Speechify. The same was trained on 100,000 hours of audio samples to make it seem to have the most natural human voice. It later partnered with celebs to use their voice for cloning using AI.
To use Speechify, you can download the app though the same is also available as a Chrome extension. You can use the same to listen to content stored on Google Drive, iCloud, or Dropbox. You can listen to books, documents or any articles using the app. The free basic version offers 6 reading voices and will let you listen at speeds of up to 1X. The premium version offers more than 250 voices and over 50 languages. It supports reading speeds of up to 4.5x and costs $11.67 per month.
With a keen interest in tech, I make it a point to keep myself updated on the latest developments in technology and gadgets. That includes smartphones or tablet devices but stretches to even AI and self-driven automobiles, the latter being my latest fad. Besides writing, I like watching videos, reading, listening to music, or experimenting with different recipes. The motion picture is another aspect that interests me a lot, and I'll likely make a film sometime in the future.
