A16z recently released a very detailed analysis of podcasting and the ecosystem that has sprung up in the last few years. I’m a huge fan of podcasts myself easily listening to 10+ hours a week of them so I was fascinated to get the overview of the space. I’m not alone in apparently spending a ton of time listening to them. You can read the full analysis here
Voice synthesis is the the next generation of audio editing. It has been called “the Photoshop of voice" and is a rapidly emerging technology which allows software to convert text into speech synthesis of a voice that is completely indistinguishable from the real thing. It allows anyone to edit recordings of what someone has said such that it sounds like the person actually has said the edit or even flat out create artificial sound-alike voice recordings of anyone in the world.
Voice synthesis software works by taking in sound clips from the person you want to copy as inputs, with the software able to convert these to make any sound or combination of sounds (i.e. words and actual sentences). Examples of these new types of software include Adobe Voco, WaveNet, and the recently launched Descript.
My concern is around the ethical issues and the next level of fakes news this type of technology will give rise to. It is extremely scary to think about the power of anyone having the ability to make it sound like world and corporate leaders have said anything you want. It also extends to being able to create songs and albums sounding like they were sung by your favorite celebrity without their consent. Even worse, it is nearly indistinguishable from real voice recordings with no way to verify if the audio is real or fake.
There many legitimate use cases for this type of software, especially for members of the media and the record industry, but I do have a lot of concern that voice synthesis technology will enable a more insidious and dangerous form of fake news and manipulation. Being able to make anyone say anything with no way to prove it is a scary prospect with a number of potentially malicious use cases.
You can see this technology in action on Barack Obama below as well as a demonstration of Descript's software.
Overview
Crypton Future Media is a startup that does sound and music related software including sound synthesizers and music library manipulation. The company licences its software to large and small companies across a number of industries including everyone from small music stores to Nintendo, Apple, government organizations, traditional media companies, etc. In addition the company has an eCommerce business for mobile devices including ringtones.
Most noteworthy of their products is Hatsune Miku a software singing voice synthesizer that has morphed into a community constructed digital persona and cyber celebrity throwing sold out live concerts everywhere from Los Angeles to Tokyo. To really grasp the concept see this amazing video of a packed concert as a piece of voice software attracts cheering legions of fans. Hatsune Miku has over 100,000 unique songs, millions of social media fans, and hundreds of thousands of music videos all created by a global creative fanbase. With the smashing success of turning a piece of software into a celebrity persona, Crypton has created more cyber celebrities around their other voicebank products and software with similar results and fanbases being created. Amazingly this allows Crypton to monetize not just by selling their software, but also through concert ticket sales and character licensing of their products.
The team is based in Sapporo, Japan.
Why I like Them
I like Crypton because they have a fascinating, almost science fiction like business by giving charaterization to software that has inadvertently become the first ever cyber celebrity. The company has even gone as far as assigning a gender (female), an age (a perpetual 16), height, weight and blood type to make "her" more relatable to fans. The idea of making a software product into a humanoid figure (a celebrity no less) with human traits boggles my mind every time I think about it. The fact that it worked beyond their wildest expectations further blows my mind. This humanization of a product (an intangible product like software no less) is brilliant and could very well be the next generation of marketing. You aren't buying a product, you are buying a piece of and interaction with a celebrity.
The iPhone is the most successful consumer product in history and even it is not given a persona or celebrityhood status by its fans. Crypton has broken innovative new ground on what could very much be a new type of product and marketing strategy - digital celebrities wholly owned by corporations but with their content created by a global fan community. I can't wait to see what happens when this concept meets more traditional AI technologies!
Disclosure: All information is from publicly available sources, I have not had any contact with a member of the company or its investors.
Hatsune Miku, Crypto Future Media's most successful product and the world's first digital celebrity.
Overview
Drone Racing League (DRL) is a sports and media company that creates and markets drone racing competitions. The company seeks to leverage fans of traditional high speed sports such as Nascar and eSport viewers. It designs its own drones that the racers then use to race along elaborate 3D courses. They successfully utilized social media to grow their fanbase quickly and have secured spots on sports entertainment networks including ESPN. In its first season DRL claims to have reached 30 million viewers.
DRL is a New York startup founded in early 2015 by a Tough Mudder executive named Nick Horbaczewski. The company's first formal event took place at the end of 2015.
Why I like Them
Along with eSports this is the most innovative new type of entertainment to be created in the last two decade. It is very fast and visually spectacular with the ability to carry the audience into the action through cameras on the drones or even virtual reality.
It is hard to launch a new type of sport with an extremely high failure rate but DRL seems to have taken an informal hobby of drone racing and created a sports like franchise around it in a year. Although fledgling I certainly expect it to become more popular and mainstream globally, especially as viewers of traditional sports such as baseball continue to decline
Disclosure: All information is from publicly available sources, I have not had any contact with a member of the company or its investors.
