A.I. Voice Donor
Donate your voice to help Artificial Intelligence create personalized voices for people who cannot use theirs. When someone loses their voice and needs to use a digital one, their voice should be as distinct as they are. Not everyone should sound like the same robot. VocaliD’s breakthrough Voice AI solutions combine state-of-the-art speech synthesis technology with advanced speech processing tools to create custom designed voices.
Based on the discovery that a single vowel contains enough “vocal DNA” to seed the voice personalization process, VocaliD was founded with a strong social mission to create the first-ever custom voices for those living with speechlessness. As their Founder, Rupal Patel, explained at TEDWomen 2013, “We wouldn't dream of fitting a young girl with the prosthetic limb of a grown man. So, why then the same prosthetic voice?" Donate your voice to the voice database and help train the A.I. to create realistic and personalized voices for people in need!. Become a Voice Donor or become a Voice Ambassador and organize a Voice Drive in your community.
How do I get started? Just go the the Vocal.ai website and become a Voice Donor.
How much time will this take? This is a low time commitment. Spend as approximately one hour recording phrases for The Human Voicebank.
How do I expand this narrative arc? If computer science is in your narrative arc, consider building on this interest with one of the following:
Do one of the many summer programs that focus on entrepreneurship and have the students build a tech company through the process. One great example is Launch X. Use your computer science to create the product and ideally build a product for the social good.
If you are ready for a bigger time commitment (and for greater impact), become a Voice Ambassador and organize a Voice Drive in your community to help train A.I. to create personalized voices for more people.
HOT TIP: This is a great little project to kick off or complement a general interest in computer science and artificial intelligence. Make sure to build on this project with some larger and more time-intensive commitments in these interest areas.