In 2018, a gunman killed and wounded dozens of people at a high school in Parkland, Florida — now The Shotline project has used the voices of the murdered children to make automated calls to lawmakers to lobby for stricter gun laws in the United States.
As reports.The Wall Street Journal, the project uses the synthesized voices of six children who have been shot (some under the age of 10). Anyone can request a call — just enter your zip code and The Shotline will find a local representative to make the call.
«I came back because my parents used artificial intelligence to recreate my voice so I could call you», says the AI-generated voice of Joaquin Oliver, one of the teenagers killed in the Parkland shooting. «Other victims will call too».
At the time of publication, the website had received more than 8,000 requests.
«This is a US problem, and we have not been able to solve it,*]” said Oliver’s father Manuel, who started the project with his wife Patricia. *If we have to use terrible things to fix it, we will.
The Olivers used the ElevenLabs — function to synthesize their voices.a startup that recently raised more than $80 million in funding.. The tool allows you to generate voices in more than 20 languages based on a few minutes of sample.
It is reported that Joaquin Oliver’s voice was synthesized using his social media posts. Parents and guardians of other victims can also fill out a form and send recordings of their voices to The Shotline’s repository.
The project raises ethical questions about the use of artificial intelligence to create voiceovers of dead people. Last week, the Federal Communications Commission announced that .automatic calls made using a voice generated by artificial intelligence, are illegal — the decision was made after voters in New Hampshire received calls with Biden’s artificial voice urging them to skip the primaries.. The analysis conducted by the security company Pindrop showed that the audio dipfake was also created using software from ElevenLabs.