How will we know it's actually you?

"What you DIDN'T say can and will be held against you..."

(That voiceover might sound like me, but it’s actually the output of AI. . .)

As I said in my last post, as well as on talk radio, I believe 2023 is poised to bring about even greater transformation of society than what the COVID-19 pandemic brought us. We are on the cusp of a new era, characterized by a launch stage of mind-bending disruption. Over the next three years, we will witness this transformation take shape in a manner and speed that will exceed even our most daring expectations.

In anticipation of these rapid changes, I’ve built out tech infrastructure such that I can have an app use ChatGPT or other AI on the backend, while providing the user a completely novel and tailored experienced on the frontend — I just need the right idea or vision that people will care about before diving all-in on this. (So if you want to explore this with me, send me a message 😊).

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We’re all seeing ChatGPT explode in popularity. Today I discovered the power of Eleven Labs' Voice AI , which is, perhaps, equally insane in its disruptive implications.

You can have a custom voice (such as your own) read any piece of text. To demonstrate this to you, I uploaded my voice data to train the AI and I had it dictate this exact blog post. Listen to audio transcription that I’ve attached above. That voice you hear is not me speaking, it’s an AI generation.

Can you imagine what this means?

One society-breaking implication is that this might spell the death of our current legal system.

e.g.

Plaintiff: “I have proof you did this crime — listen to this audio clip that I recorded of you!”

Defendant: “No. . .you made that recording up with AI”

If the recording is the only critical piece of evidence, how will the judge decide?

You can see how this dilemma could potentially lead to both more criminals walking free, as well as more innocent people being wrongfully implicated.

Also, more generally, if we can’t differentiate between the real John and the AI-generated John, we’ll need to come up with some kind of passphrase that only the real John would know. . .

In fact, I spoke with my wife today about what we would say to each other to verify we were actually speaking to the real versions of each other 😆 . Maybe that kind of preparation strikes you as being 5-10 years too early, but it doesn’t hurt to start thinking about this.

At the very least, I want this post to make the following clear: The technology is already here. The only unknown is how long it will take for it to achieve mainstream adoption.

Happy Valentine’s Day

—Drago

P.S. I also discovered Riffusion today, which is a music generating AI. While there is still some work to do, just listen to that rap in the link and try telling me that the music doesn’t make you want to move.

P.P.S. Yesterday, I had the honor of speaking to three different audiences at Notre Dame. While I'm deeply grateful for the opportunity, it also makes me wonder how long it will be until technology like ChatGPT + ElevenLabs can completely outperform me and make presentations like mine obsolete.