Voice cloning technology platforms like ElevenLabs allow anyone to breed a voice with just a number of seconds of audio for a small fee. These technologies are changing cultural and artistic expression.
In 2023, Canadian musician Grimes released a clone of her voice and said this “It’s cool to be merged with a machine”. Similarly, in 2021, American composer Holly Herndon launched Holly+ as a voice tool that sings music using a “unmistakable processed voice”.
These women-led examples show working with the creative challenges of voice technologies, and in some ways are nothing latest: electronic music pioneer and composer Suzanne Ciani developed one technological approach a long time ago to explain a male person named “ “Steve”of their compositions when a male voice was required.
Some male producers also use language exchange technologies to present themselves as female artists. British researcher and musician Helen Reddington has observed: “Like the male gaze, the male ear is hidden and its power exerts itself behind the scenes.”
Reddington wrote this in 2018 in reference to the best way male writers/producers use female singers to achieve an audience. But applied to AI, this means a cultural dynamic through which vocal manipulation, as an extension of the male gaze and ear, may reflect deeper desires for control of female identities – particularly in music, where the voice is central to emotional expression and identity.
Earlier this month, singer Jorja Smith accused Producer Harrison Walker used AI technology to clone her vocals for his single “I Run.” Walker said: “It must be no secret that I used AI-powered processing solely to remodel my voice.” But Smith's record company responded that the producer and his distributors seemed to be delighted with the result public confusion.
AI voice technologies are a type of Information technology. However, once a voice is represented and simulated as information, it has “lost” its physical form. The combination of disembodied voice and the standard of its simulation could make it easier for people to assume computers as humans. This signifies that a person is heard whether a machine or a human speaks. It is that this connection to a individual that is broken by voice cloning.
British AI artist Oliver McCann, generally known as imoliver, admits openly to having “no musical talent in any respect…I can’t sing, I can’t play instruments and I even have no musical background in any respect.” But with the assistance of AI, he developed songs that put a female personality within the foreground. Likewise, renowned producer Timbaland has invented a pink-haired artist, TaTa, in a brand new genre he calls A-Pop artificial pop. But does a creator's gender play a task in the event of AI artists and a broader fan base?
Noonaouria digital avatar signed by Warner Music Central Europe in 2024, while not entirely AI-generated, is a mixture of digital tools, presented as a man-made young fashionista turned pop star. The Instagram feed for Noonoouri shows on a regular basis activities – eating pasta, throwing peace signs and even signaling support for Black Lives Matter. The avatar's appearance is malleable. But these gestures and altered appearance, while seemingly empathetic, could also be performative somewhat than transformative.
Noonoouri creator Jeorg Zuber used his own voice – digitally feminized – and motion capture of his movements to animate the avatar. It is Zuber's embodiment of femininity that’s portrayed here to ultimately create a supple brand ambassador. As Warner's senior A&R executive March LarkShe has stated: “We can change her style in a minute…we will make her fly if we would like.”
As British creator Laura Bates, founding father of the Everyday Sexism Project, pointed this outApps used to develop these female avatars and characters are based on a misogynistic idea of ​​”what a girl is and must be. She won’t ever contradict you, she is going to never answer you.” It is just not the AI ​​that imitates the identity, however the human enterprise.
Technology may blur boundaries, but it surely also shows who holds the ability. When male creators use AI to simulate female voices and roles, are they expanding their artistic possibilities or perpetuating a brand new type of gender appropriation, ventriloquism, and misogyny? One call to motion to counteract the expansion of the manosphere is the increased presence of women' voices to combat misogyny. But voice simulation technologies can undo this.
In the age of AI, impersonation takes on latest meaning. When mediated through technologies largely controlled by cisgender men and tech platform corporations, female impersonation risks becoming a tool of dominance somewhat than expression. It's now not nearly artistic freedom, but about who gets to talk and thru whom it’s spoken.
