Project Revoice
Advertiser
- The ALS Association is an American nonprofit organization that raises money for research and patient services, promotes awareness about and advocates in state and federal government on issues related to amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS)
Objective / insight
- ALS is a progressive neurodegenerative disease that affects nerve cells in the brain and the spinal cord
- Most patients end up paralyzed in a wheelchair and forced to communicate via text-to-speech devices, typically with a default ‘computer’ voice
- ALS Association wanted to change the way people live with ALS by giving sufferers the full use of their own authentic voices
Implemented strategy
- To rebuild a patient’s voice, they had to create a databank of audio for the algorithm to work with
- With only 2-3 hours of transcribed audio data as raw material, this technology is able to create a complete digital voice clone that’s able to say anything in real-time via text input
Technology implemented
- Project Revoice is powered by a custom machine learning algorithm that can analyze the unique characteristics (or DNA) of a voice – including tone, pitch and inflections
- Then the project has built an online voice bank where ALS sufferers can easily record the voice data necessary for their own voice clones
Results
- By the end of 2018, these recordings will be used to create more ‘Revoices’, which users can access and ‘speak’ with through the website or a custom API
- By week two over 41 million people had posted, commented shared or mentioned the campaign
- Currently over 100 patients a week are signing up to receive their own Revoice
