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Anytime you talk about the subject of artificial intelligence, you’re talking about something that’s morally gray and potentially devastating. The case is the same with the Universal Translator tool that Google talked about during Google I/O. The company spoke about the potential good that this tool can bring along with the potential harm (via Techcrunch).
With the introduction of Bard, the tool that can be used to create code and written content, and MusicLM, the tool that can be used to instantly generate music from a text prompt, Google definitely talked about some scary technology that could do some major harm. Universal Translator is no different.
This is a pretty Innovative technology that can help people Translate speech. The technology will take a video of someone speaking, and dub it in a different language. This will involve translating the speech and playing back an AI-generated voice that matches the original speaker’s voice and tone. Lastly, Google will use AI to sync up the speaker’s lips with the newly generated audio.
It will be as though the speaker originally recorded the video in a different language.
Google acknowledges that the Universal Translator tool can be used for harm
Artificial intelligence is, and has been, skirting the line between useful and dangerous. The use of AI-generated voices and deep-faking technology is creeping out of The Uncanny Valley and into Realism City. It’s becoming harder to distinguish between AI-generated voices and the real thing.
This means that we’re approaching the ability to generate any person saying or doing anything. Do you hate a celebrity? You can make a fake video of them saying racist or anti-Semitic things. Are you a jealous ex? Well, you can generate false videos or audio of them cheating on their current lover. That’s becoming less of an impossibility.
This is why, during the presentation, James Manyika noted the phrase “Bold and Responsible.” This means that Google, before making this technology available to the masses, will do what it can to make sure that malicious people won’t be able to use this technology for malicious Acts.
The thing is, it’s tough to see how the company will be able to accomplish this. There’s only one Google, but there are millions of malicious people out there. This could easily get out of control and cause some real harm to innocent people. We’ll just have to see how things play out and hope that Google knows what it’s doing.