Microsoft Executive, Julia White, according to the post, recently took the stage at the company’s Inspire partner conference to demonstrate how it’s now possible to not only create an incredibly life-like hologram of a person, but to then make the hologram speak another language in the person’s own voice.
To then make it seem like White was speaking Japanese, Microsoft used its neural text-to-speech technology to create White’s ‘’personalised voice signature.’’ Once it had that, it could have the hologram say anything, in any language, and the audio would sound like White’s voice.
Of course, an international audience could still benefit from a presentation like White’s even if Microsoft didn’t turn her into a hologram or use AI to replicate her voice — they could watch her on their television or computer screen, and listen along as a human translator repeated White’s words in their native tongue.
But this technology removes so many of those barriers between the speaker and the audience.
Imagine a world leader delivering a speech, and every person across the globe feeling like the leader was in the room with them and speaking the local language. Or a world-class professor giving a lecture that anyone could attend and understand — without leaving their homes and without learning their teacher’s language.
And then there’s the exciting possibility of what might come next. Mixed reality contact lenses that do away with the need for a headset altogether? AI that can translate speech in the native speaker’s voice in real-time?
