I Challenged My AI Clone to Change Me for twenty-four Hours | WSJ

– Today we're going tocreate an avatar that looks and moves like me. (camera snapping) We begin by smiling into the camera. (dramatic music)I love to smile. Smiling's my favorite. I'm breathing gently for a short second. Is this what breathing looks like? (dramatic music).

I'm Joanna Stern, and I'mexcited to host this video. No, I am the real Joanna. Okay, so I cloned myself. Kinda. Howdy. Why? Well, the latest AItools that generate text and images already make ithard to tell the difference between what's real and what's fake. What's coming next with AI-generated voice.

And video is gonna blurthe lines even more. So I came up with a challenge. Can I replace myself with AI for the day? Yes, I came up with four challenges to see if AI me could sub in for real me so real me had more time for me things. (tranquil music) Or at least that's how I wanted it to go. – Still a little creeped out.

That I'm looking at a frozen Joanna. – Okay, let's do this. – Scene three, take two, calibration. (board clapping) – Before we get into the challenges, let's talk about my AI avatar, which was made by astartup called Synthesia. Going to make my avatar. At a professional studio in New York,.

The company recorded me doinga series of head movements. I feel like I'm at the eye doctor. Okay. And reading through a ratherodd pre-written script. Positive thinking will help you believe in your self and fill you withself-esteem and confidence. After that, I headed to an audio studio where I recorded anotherscript for about an hour. My name is Joanna Sternand I hereby consent to this audio recordingto create a custom voice.

The company took that alland used it as training data and ran it through theirAI neural networks. (dramatic music)(text buzzing) Hello, Joanna. You don't mind if I call you Joanna? Do you? Okay. So The voice isn't the best. A tool called ElevenLabsproduced something better after my producer Kenny uploaded two hours.

Of my previous recordings. I am the real Joanna. I am the real Joanna. I am the real Joanna. Both Synthesia andElevenLabs work similarly. Type in anything and AI Joannajust says it right back. Synthesia is aimed at companies that want to make internal videos. It charges at least $1,000to create a custom avatar.

Creating a voice clone with ElevenLabs is $5 a month. Challenge one: phone calls. I happened to have acall scheduled that day with Evan Spiegel, the CEO of Snap. The company recently released My AI, a chatbot within the popular app. Hey Evan, it's Joanna. Do you worry that if wechat with AI all day,.

We'll stop talking to our real friends? – Definitely notwhat we've been seeing. I think that's one of the real benefits of our sort of testingand learning approach. So far, I think if anything, it's gonna become aconversation enhancement and improve the waythat people communicate with their friends and family. – Did you think by anychance that my question.

To you was generated by an AI voice? (Evan chuckling) – No. No. I mean, the first word or twowas a little bit of a giveaway but I thought maybe youwere extra serious today. (Joanna chuckling) – Even my ownsister was pretty fooled when I called her about her dead fish. – Hello?.

– Hey, Jules. I just heard about Swimmy Dimi and I wanted to let you knowhow sorry I am for your loss. Did you think it was me? – At first, yes. And then no. Like it sounds, it's obviouslyexactly like you, but just with the fact that like, itdoesn't pause for talking back. – Challenge one: pass.

Challenge two: create a TikTok. I asked ChatGPT to write a TikTok script in the voice of Joanna Sternabout an obscure iOS 16 tip. The hardest thing was gettingChatGPT to write the truth. It just made stuff up. Finally, I got a good one. Although the writingcertainly was not very me. I pasted the script into Synthesia, put a green screen behindmy avatar and exported it.

While the WSJ TikTok team edited, I. (pleasant piano music)(Joanna snoring) I was pretty impressedwith the final TikTok. TikTok fam, it's JoannaStern, your iOS wizard. Today we're unearthing the hidden world of back tap gestures. I love that I did not have to shoot this. I did not have to put on nice clothes, do my hair, do my makeup, say these lines.

But TikTok was less impressed. They picked up on the fact that the avatar never moves its arms, that the mouth movementsdon't always match the audio and that there's little facial expression. Synthesia has alreadystarted to improve a lot of this in beta versions of its avatars. – Look, I can nod my head. (dramatic music).

– Challenge two: fail. Challenge three: bank biometrics. Instead of asking security questions, some banks use yourvoice to confirm it's you before transferring youto a customer service rep. – This call willbe monitored and recorded and your voice may beused for verification. Please speak your first and last name, followed by your mailing address.

– Joanna Stern.(beeping sound) – This is Nikki withChase credit card services. – It worked. Chase confirmed the voiceand put me straight through to a service rep. No additional questions asked. Later in the day, I askedour intern Slav to try to do his best impression ofme to see what would happen. – Please speakyour first and last name,.

Followed by your mailing address. (beeping sound) – Joanna Stern.(beeping sound) – Please enter thelast three digits printed on the signature panelon the back of your card. – See, in Slav's case, the voice biometric system didn't buy it. It asked for further verification. When I reached out toChase, a spokeswoman said,.

“We use voice biometrics,along with a variety of other methods to authenticatecustomers who call us.” She added that to complete requests, customers must provideadditional information. Challenge three: pass. Challenge four: video calls. I asked ChatGPT to generatesome generic meeting phrases and exported videos ofmy avatar saying them. Then I installed some software.

On my Mac to pump that videointo my Google Meet calls. That sounds good. – [Caller 1] Oh, you're muted, Joanna. My God, is this the real Joanna? – Yeah, this looks like a fake. It sounds good. – She looks, yeah, what is happening here? – How did you know that it wasn't me? – It looked like ahologram version of you.

– [Caller 2] It was the posture for me. – She also didn't make any jokes. – Challenge four: big fail. So what did we learn today? We learned that video clones aren't going to fool anyone yet but AI voices are quite good. We also learned that while youcould use these to save time, people could also misuse them.

Do I wanna avoid goingto the studio some days? Yep. Do I fear scammers usingour voices to call banks or our families? Yep. Synthesia says it requiresthose creating avatars to give verbal consent. ElevenLabs requires youcheck a box saying you have permission to use the voice.

And the company says it'scapable of identifying its voices if they are misused. Either way, it means we'reall going to have to be on high alert to tellthe real versus the AI. – And finally, stay human, everyone. Good luck. I am inevitable. (fingers snapping)

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