AI voice clones take over; Amazon returns to office; GeekWire Awards preview
GeekWire
GeekWire
4.8 • 127 Ratings
🗓️ 6 May 2023
⏱️ 34 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
For all the hype over generative artificial intelligence, how far has AI really advanced? Where is the new line between humanity and technology, and what does it mean for the future of our daily lives and work?
GeekWire is exploring these questions in our Bot or Not series, and this week on the GeekWire Podcast, we share and assess the preliminary results of an experiment that we’ve been doing as part of this effort. We created AI voice clones for GeekWire's John Cook and Todd Bishop, and had those clones read an AI-generated podcast script.
You can hear a short clip from this experiment in the first segment of this week’s episode, followed by reactions from our colleague Kurt Schlosser, and from John, who was hearing his own voice clone for the first time.
Stay tuned in the coming weeks for a more in-depth look at this process and the larger issues raised by AI voice cloning as part of our Bot or Not series.
- In the second segment, we get Kurt’s first-hand report from Amazon headquarters as the tech giant’s employees return to the office en masse for the first time in more than three years.
- In the final segment, listen for a preview of the GeekWire Awards, coming up May 18 in Seattle. Check out all of our GeekWire Awards coverage here, and learn more on the GeekWire Awards event site.
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | We have a lot to talk about today, especially some big news from Amazon. Yeah, this was a very ambitious product that aimed to give users a holistic view of their health and wellness. What do you think of the Johnbot? Love the Johnbot. Let's just mail it in. I hate those guys... Wait, the clones are us. |
| 0:21.6 | The clones are us, or both. |
| 0:30.6 | Hello, and welcome to Geekwire. |
| 0:32.4 | I'm Geekwire co-founder, Todd Bishop. |
| 0:34.5 | And I'm Geekwire co-founder John Cook. |
| 0:36.7 | How's it going, John? Hanging in there. How are you doing? Just having a hard time getting into it today. That's the rainy weather. It's the rainy weather. I know we had that false Seattle spring, and now it's hit us with the winter again, and it's just like I'm a little down. And we've been covering AI so much lately. I've just been thinking, you know, wouldn't it |
| 0:55.5 | be nice on days like this if I could just turn our job over to the bots? And so I thought we'd |
| 1:02.3 | actually give that a try. Let's just try about a minute and a half here and see how this goes. |
| 1:06.9 | Welcome to Geekwire. I'm Geekwire co-founder Todd Bishop. And I'm Geekwire co-founder John Cook. |
| 1:11.8 | We're coming to you from Seattle, where we get to report each day on what's happening around us in technology, business, and innovation. |
| 1:18.5 | What happens here matters everywhere. And every week on this show, we talk about some of the most interesting stories in the news. |
| 1:24.4 | We have a lot to talk about today, especially some big news from Amazon. |
| 1:28.5 | That's right, Todd. Amazon made some surprising announcements this week that could have a huge |
| 1:32.9 | impact on its future and the future of technology in general. Let's start with the first one. |
| 1:38.4 | Amazon is discontinuing its halo line of health and fitness devices. This is the product that Amazon launched in 2020, which included a wristband that tracked your |
| 1:48.0 | activity, sleep, body fat, and even your tone of voice. |
| 1:52.2 | Yeah, this was a very ambitious product that aimed to give users a holistic view of their |
| 1:56.3 | health and wellness. |
| 1:57.5 | But it also faced a lot of criticism and skepticism from consumers and experts, |
| 2:01.7 | who questioned its accuracy, privacy, and usefulness. |
| 2:05.5 | And apparently it didn't sell very well either. According to reports, Amazon only sold |
| 2:09.4 | about 200,000 Halo devices in the U.S. since its launch, which is a tiny fraction of the market |
... |
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