Resurrecting a voice and creating new memories through AI

拥有自己的声音意味着什么，对别人又意味着什么 else to possess it? How do you reconstruct someone who is no longer here, and how real would that version of them be? Would it matter how real they are? 

这些是许多哲学、伦理和技术问题中的一些 artificial intelligence (AI) has brought to the fore and that Sarah Sweeney她正在通过她的长期项目进行竞争 “Conversations with My Deepfake Dad.”

斯威尼的父亲是一名编剧，他把自己的工作和生活记录在录音带中， died at the age of 44, when Sweeney was 17.  

“当我44岁的时候，我满脑子都是和以前一样的感觉 age he was when he died,” Sweeney says. “Was I at the same place in my life?”  

大约在那个时候，她也开始对深度造假感兴趣——媒体产生的 使用人工智能代替某人的肖像——以及这种能力的含义.  

“当我翻看闪存盘时，发现了我爸爸小时候的老电影 在我很小的时候，我就有这样的想法:如果你能用它制造新的记忆，会发生什么呢 someone who had died?”

斯威尼联系了一家名为“相似人工智能”的公司，并开始与该公司合作 create a clone of her father’s voice using its speech-to-speech software. “It takes 某人的演讲——我们一直称他们为“操纵木偶的人”，也就是说话的人 — and maps my dad’s voice onto it,” she explains.  

在接下来的几个月里，她找到了父亲六个小时的录音，并开始工作 和她的母亲一起思考伦理和技术挑战 of generating new conversations using her father’s voice. “I think a big question 在这个项目中，“谁有权利说那些已经不在我们身边的人。 can be used in a deepfake?’ I had to produce a death certificate and a letter of consent from my mother. 

随着斯威尼项目的推进，她考虑了这些对话的对象 her father would look like. “I started thinking about, when someone dies, where might those answers come from?” she recalls. “One of the things I became really interested 这是我们如何在一个人死后抱着他，以及我们如何想象他们是唯一的版本 of that person. But in fact, there are maybe 60 versions of that person in the world held by different people.” 
 
她决定制作六段音频对话，每段都基于不同的档案 materials, interviews, and research. Sweeney writes both sides of each 20-minute-long conversation. She then speaks her side and her dad’s deepfake voice speaks his.  

“The first dad is based on interviews with my mom and my sisters. All his answers are written from what they think he would have said. So I got to meet my mom’s version of my dad and my sisters’ version of my dad. And I’m learning a lot about him through that.”  

“The second one is just him, so that one is really interesting. It’s only words that he used in his letters and his tapes.” 

“The third one is therapy sessions. They’re called empty chair therapy sessions. The fourth is a medium. The fifth is a chatbot. And the sixth is just voice memos to myself that I’ve been recording in the car.” 

这些录音，连同照片，将构成一个在线展示 her father.

斯威尼已经在火博体育的几堂课上使用了音频组件，包括 psychology, English, media and film studies, and First-Year Experience classes.  

“I listen to this file with them and then we have a conversation.”  

斯威尼敏锐地意识到她的项目引发了一系列复杂的问题 她是火博体育学院心理学副教授之一 杰斯·沙利文，在2023年春季教授人工自我课程 梅森·斯托克斯(Mason Stokes)在2023年秋季教授了“用人工智能写作”这门课程 通过他们的研究和教学来应对人工智能的复杂性. Skidmore’s Center for Leadership, Teaching, and Learning 以及学院的学习体验设计和数字奖学金支持(LEDS) 团队甚至组织了一个长达一个学期的人工智能智囊团来探索其中的一些问题 issues this past fall.  

Sweeney的项目继续展开，快速发展的技术继续发展 to raise ethical, philosophical, legal, and other questions. Sweeney hopes her project 会不会以多种方式吸引不同的观众.

“如果你看新闻，现在的担忧是，我们的世界正在发生变化 we can’t figure out what’s real and not real. This piece is a little bit about saying, ‘Is there something interesting in something that’s both real and not real?’ And I 我认为这是我真正想让我们考虑的这些技术的工作 with our memories. They’re kind of incredible but also really scary. And I think that’s 这篇文章真正要表达的是——这种奇怪对话的不可思议的可能性 I’m having with my dad.

“人们经常问我的一个问题是，‘这是真的还是假的重要吗?’ And I don’t think it does. At some points it really doesn’t matter. It feels like my dad.”