Speech technology has been around for a long time, but in the last 12 months it’s undergone a quantum leap. New speech synthesis models are able to produce speech that’s often indistinguishable from real speech. I’m sure many listeners have heard deep fakes where computer speech perfectly mimics the voice of famous actors or public figures. A major factor in driving the ongoing advances is generative AI.

Speechlab is at the forefront of using new AI techniques for realtime dubbing, which is the process of converting speech from one language into another. For the interested listener, we recommend hearing the examples with President Obama speaking Spanish or Elon Musk speaking Japanese in this YouTube video. Ivan Galea is the Co-founder and President at Speechlab and he joins the show to talk about how we’re on the cusp of reaching the holy grail of speech technology – real time dubbing – and how this will erase barriers to communication and likely transform the world.

Please click here to view this show’s transcript.

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