Jordan Peterson Voice Generation Brings Joy to Millions, But Then Goes Silent

I don't blame Jordan Peterson for being upset that this site which claims it can render text into Jordan Peterson's voice has him saying all sorts of kooky things.

In April of this year, a company called Coding Elite exposed an artificial intelligence (AI) program that to a substantial sample of my voice, which is easily accessible on the YouTube lectures and podcasts that I have posted over the last years. In consequence, they were able to duplicate my manner of speaking with exceptional precision, starting out by producing versions of me rapping Eminem songs such as Lose Yourself (which has now garnered 250,000 views) and Rap God (which has only garnered 17,000) as well as Rock Lobster (1400 views). They have done something similar with Bernie Sanders (singing Dancing Queen), Donald Trump (Sweet Dreams) and Ben Shapiro, who also delivered Rap God. The company has a model, the address of which you can find on their YouTube channel, which allows the use to make Trump, Obama, Clinton or Sanders say anything whatsoever.

I happen to think Rap God is an amazing piece of work, and when I first encountered my verbal avatar belting out the lyrics I thought that it was cool, in a teenage tech-geek sort of way. And I suppose it was. This caused quite a stir on the net in April, with media companies such as Forbes and Motherboard (a division of Vice) noting that the machine learning technology only required six hours of original audio (that is, actually generated by me) to produce its credible fakes, matching rhythm, stress, sound and prose intonation.

This week, however, a company called notjordanpeterson.com put an AI engine online that allows anyone to type anything and have it reproduced in my voice. It’s hard to get access to or use the site, at the moment, presumably because it is currently attracting more traffic than its servers can handle. [NOTE: As of August 23, this website posted the following announcement: In light of Dr. Peterson’s response to the technology demonstrated by this site, which you can read here, and out of respect for Dr. Peterson, the functionality of the site will be disabled for the time being.]

But it was pretty funny while it lasted.

The original "Rap God," the Jordan Peterson version, is here. Content warning for offensive rap lyrics.

Below, some more Not Jordan Peterson audio clips. I like the one about the academic research into whether traps are gay.

Content warning for all of these; the go-to joke is to make "Jordan Peterson" say something uncharacteristically profane.

Whether you think this is funny or not -- I think it's funny as long as it's branded as a fake, and restricts itself to silliness rather than defamation -- you should definitely know that this technology is now widely available, and that any audio you hear may be completely fake but nearly impossible to discern as fake.

And of course you can't trust video either -- it's now within anyone's ability to create "Deep Fake" video of anyone on earth.

This video shows how easy it is to morph Bill Hader into Tom Cruise, whenever Hader slips into his Tom Cruise impression.

posted by Ace of Spades at 08:00 PM

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