When AI recreates the female voice, it also rewrites who gets heard

Jan 1
1 min read

AI voice technologies are a form of information technology. However, once a voice is rendered as information and is simulated, it will have "lost" its physical form.

The combination of disembodied voice and the quality of its simulation can make it easier for people to think of computers as being like a human. This means that a person will be heard whether a machine or human speaks. It is this connection to a person that voice cloning disrupts.

British AI artist Oliver McCann, known as imoliver, openly admits to having "no musical talent at all … I can't sing, I can't play instruments, and I have no musical background at all." Yet through AI, he has developed songs that foreground a female persona.

Likewise, the eminent producer Timbaland has invented a pink-haired female artist, TaTa, in a new genre he refers to as a-pop or artificial pop. But does a creator's gender matter in the development of AI artists and wider fanbases?