{"id":1237006,"date":"2025-03-04T18:35:01","date_gmt":"2025-03-04T23:35:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1237006"},"modified":"2025-03-04T18:35:01","modified_gmt":"2025-03-04T23:35:01","slug":"eerily-realistic-ai-voice-demo-sparks-amazement-and-discomfort-online","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1237006","title":{"rendered":"Eerily realistic AI voice demo sparks amazement and discomfort online"},"content":{"rendered":"<div>\n<p>In late 2013, the Spike Jonze film <a href=\"https:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Her_(2013_film)\"><em>Her<\/em><\/a> imagined a future where people would form <a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/information-technology\/2023\/10\/people-are-speaking-with-chatgpt-for-hours-bringing-2013s-her-closer-to-reality\/\">emotional connections<\/a> with AI voice assistants. Nearly 12 years later, that fictional premise has veered closer to reality with the release of a new conversational voice model from AI startup Sesame that has left many users both fascinated and unnerved.<\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I tried the demo, and it was genuinely startling how human it felt,&#8221; <a href=\"https:\/\/news.ycombinator.com\/item?id=43227957\">wrote<\/a> one Hacker News user who tested the system. &#8220;I&#8217;m almost a bit worried I will start feeling emotionally attached to a voice assistant with this level of human-like sound.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p>In late February, Sesame <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sesame.com\/research\/crossing_the_uncanny_valley_of_voice#demo\">released a demo<\/a> for the company&#8217;s new Conversational Speech Model (CSM) that appears to cross over what many consider the &#8220;uncanny valley&#8221; of AI-generated speech, with some testers reporting emotional connections to the male or female voice assistant (&#8220;Miles&#8221; and &#8220;Maya&#8221;).<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/ai\/2025\/03\/users-report-emotional-bonds-with-startlingly-realistic-ai-voice-demo\/\">Read full article<\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/arstechnica.com\/ai\/2025\/03\/users-report-emotional-bonds-with-startlingly-realistic-ai-voice-demo\/#comments\">Comments<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In late 2013, the Spike Jonze film Her imagined a future where people would form emotional connections with AI voice assistants. Nearly 12 years later, that fictional premise has veered closer to reality with the release of a new conversational &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/?p=1237006\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[27,44,110],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1237006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ars-technica","category-technology","category-unfiltered-rss"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1237006","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1237006"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1237006\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1237006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1237006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.prime-wow.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1237006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}