Technology

These ‘A.I. humans’ are letting gamers modify their voices in real time

Published

2 years ago

June 21, 2023

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Voicemod has created 20 “AI humans,” digital personas that allow gamers to speak in voices other than their own.

Voicemod

An artificial intelligence firm in Spain has unveiled a number of “AI humans” that allow people to modify their voices in video games — in real time.

Voicemod, which is based in Valencia, on Wednesday released 20 humanlike characters, ranging from a 20-something woman to an elderly man. The voices are trained on voices from professional human voice actors.

In a demonstration of the tech on a call with CNBC, Voicemod’s CEO, Jaime Bosch, showed himself speaking regularly and changing it to several different voices, from a high-pitched female speaker to a baritone male voice.

Gamers can download the app on their Apple Mac or Windows PC and incorporate Voicemod’s technology as a “virtual microphone” that sits in between the microphone application they’re using to start speaking through the alternative personas.

Voicemod, which counts talent from leading technical universities in Valencia and Barcelona, has been working on voice synthesis and interactive audio features since 2014, with many of its employees specializing in music technology and audio.

Used by more than 40 million people, Voicemod’s tech can be used by people in the social app Discord to speak with each other in voices other than their own while playing games.

“We have an amazing creativity community using this mainly to have fun, enjoy it with their friends and have a sense of belonging,” Bosch said in an interview with CNBC.

“One of the biggest use cases I love the most is shy people — we have some people who write to us saying I wasn’t able to really socialize with people who are now able to do that.”

It’s a milestone in the world of conversational AI. While many of today’s AI algorithms allow people to submit text and receive something AI generated back, the feat of ensuring this is done in real time is much harder.

The technology requires a significant amount of computing power. And producing and patenting the proprietary algorithm models behind it takes a lot of investment, and talent.

To that end, Voicemod has raised $23 million in cash from several venture capitalists including Leadwind and Bitkraft Ventures.

Bosch is also no stranger to the risks surrounding how the technology can end up being abused — voice-changing technology could be used to imitate leading political figures or scam people, for example.

“This is something I think of every single day, something we’re thinking about in the company every single day when it comes to the creation of voices,” he said.

The company is close to finishing a “watermarking” solution that can identify whether voices have been generated using modification systems. It is also in discussions with other firms about standardization of such systems and ensuring voice-changing tech is released safely.

“One thing is, clear laws will come,” Bosch said. “We know Europe is working on that. The reality is that, usually, companies go faster than the laws.”

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Technology

Tesla short sellers have made $11.5 billion from this year’s selloff

Published

2 hours ago

April 22, 2025

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Tesla short sellers have made .5 billion from this year's selloff

It’s been a brutal year for Tesla shareholders so far, and a hugely profitable one for short sellers, who bet on a decline in the company’s stock price.

Tesla shorts have generated $11.5 billion in mark-to-market profits in 2025, according to data from S3 Partners. The data reflected Monday’s closing price of $227.50, at which point Tesla shares were down 44% for the year.

The stock rallied about 4% on Tuesday, along with gains in the broader market, heading into Tesla’s first-quarter earnings report after the close of trading. Tesla didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

The electric vehicle maker is expected to report a slight decline in year-over-year revenue weeks after announcing a 13% drop in vehicle deliveries for the quarter. With CEO Elon Musk playing a central role in President Donald Trump’s administration, responsible for dramatically cutting the size and capacity of the federal government, Tesla has faced widespread protests in the U.S. and Europe, where Musk has actively supported Germany’s far-right AfD party.

Tesla shares plummeted 36% in the first quarter, their worst performance for any period since 2022, and have continued to drop in April, largely on concerns that President Trump’s sweeping tariffs on top trade partners will increase the cost of parts and materials crucial for EV production, including manufacturing equipment, automotive glass, printed circuit boards and battery cells.

The company is also struggling to keep pace with lower-cost competitors in China, and is a laggard in the robotaxi market, which is currently dominated in the U.S. by Alphabet’s Waymo. Tesla has promised to launch its first driverless ride-hailing offering in Austin, Texas, in June.

Tesla has been the biggest stock decliner among tech megacaps this year, followed by Nvidia, which was down about 28% as of Monday’s close. The chipmaker has been the second-best profit generator for short sellers, generating returns of $9.4 billion, according to S3.

Nvidia is currently the most-shorted stock in terms of value, with $24.6 billion worth sold short, S3 said. Apple is second at $22.2 billion, and Tesla is third at $17.6 billion.

Musk has a long and antagonistic history with short sellers, who have made plenty of money at times during Tesla’s 15 years on the stock market, but have also been burned badly for extended stretches.

In 2020, Tesla publicly mocked short sellers, promoting red satin shorts for sale.

“Limited edition shorts now available at Tesla.com/shortshorts” Musk wrote in a social media post in July of that year, as the stock was in the midst of a steep rally.

Two years earlier, hedge fund manager David Einhorn of Greenlight Capital posted a tweet that he received the pairs of short shorts that Musk had promised him.

“I want to thank @elonmusk for the shorts. He is a man of his word!” Einhorn wrote. Einhorn had previously disclosed that his firm’s bet against Tesla “was our second biggest loser” in the most recent quarter.

In February 2022, after reports surfaced that the Department of Justice was investigating two investors who had shorted Tesla’s stock, Musk told CNBC that he was “greatly encouraged” by the action and said “hedge funds have used short selling and complex derivatives to take advantage of small investors.”

PlainSite founder Aaron Greenspan, a former Tesla short seller and outspoken critic of Musk, sued the Tesla CEO alleging he engaged in stock price manipulation for years through a variety of schemes.

The case was removed to federal court last year. In 2023, Musk’s social network X banned Greenspan and PlainSite, which publishes legal and other public and company records, from the platform.

— CNBC’s Tom Rotunno contributed to this report.

WATCH: Here’s what to watch for in Tesla’s earnings report

Technology

Instagram launches Edits app for video, rivaling TikTok

Published

4 hours ago

April 22, 2025

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Instagram Edits app.

Courtesy: Instagram

Instagram on Tuesday launched its standalone Edits video creation app that offers features similar to those already available from TikTok parent Bytedance.

The new app allows creators to organize project ideas, shoot and edit video, and access insights about content. Edits includes background replacement, automatic captioning and artificial intelligence tools that can turn images into video.

“There’s a lot going on in the world right now and no matter what happens, we think it’s our job to create the most compelling creative tools for those of you who make videos for not just Instagram but for platforms out there,” said Adam Mosseri, the head of Instagram, in a Reel posted in January announcing the app.

Edits appears to be Meta‘s answer to CapCut, TikTok’s sister app that is also owned by China-based parent company ByteDance, which allows users to create and edit video on their phone or computer.

Instagram Edits app.

Courtesy: Instagram

Tesla set to report first-quarter results after the bell

Published

4 hours ago

April 22, 2025

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Tesla set to report first-quarter results after the bell

Tesla CEO Elon Musk wears a ‘Trump Was Right About Everything!’ hat, as he, U.S. Trade Representative Jamieson Greer and Central Intelligence Agency Director John Ratcliffe attend a cabinet meeting at the White House, in Washington, D.C., U.S., March 24, 2025.

Carlos Barria | Reuters

Tesla is set to report first-quarter earnings on Tuesday after market close.

Here’s what Wall Street is expecting, based on a survey of analysts by LSEG:

Earnings per share: 39 cents
Revenue: $21.11 billion

Tesla is expected to report a slight revenue decline from $21.3 billion in the same quarter a year earlier. However, investors are going to be more focused on what the future holds after concerns about tariffs and CEO Elon Musk’s close ties to the White House pushed the stock price down 44% so far this year as of Monday’s close.

Earlier this month, Tesla reported a 13% decline in deliveries to 336,681. Tesla blamed the lower deliveries, in part, on the need to suspend production temporarily at its factories while it upgraded lines to start manufacturing a refreshed version of its popular Model Y electric SUVs.

Deliveries are the closest approximation of vehicle sales reported by Tesla but are not precisely defined in the company’s shareholder communications.

At an all-hands meeting with employees last month, Musk tried to reassure staffers that they were still in good hands, and to “hang onto your stock.” He pointed to the popularity of the Model Y, and Tesla’s potential in robotics, artificial intelligence and autonomous vehicle technology.

At the meeting, Musk also made light of the backlash against Tesla elicited by his work for President Donald Trump to reduce the size of the federal government, and his endorsements of Germany’s anti-immigrant AfD party, along with other political rhetoric and antics.

“If you read the news it feels like, you know, Armageddon,” Musk said on a livestream of the employees meeting. “It’s like, I can’t walk past the TV without seeing a Tesla on fire.” He followed up saying, “This is psycho, stop being psycho!”

That was before Trump’s announcement earlier this month of widespread tariffs, the one area where Musk has publicly broken with the Trump administration. On X, he called Peter Navarro, Trump’s top trade advisor and tariff proponent, a “moron” and “dumber than a sack of bricks.”

Tesla stands to take a significant hit from the president’s proposed tariffs, assuming they don’t get rolled back. Tesla manufactures cars in the U.S. for domestic sales so it’s not subject to the 25% tariff on imported autos, but the hefty levies on other components and materials could be severe.

Tesla relies on suppliers in Mexico and China for items like automotive glass, printed circuit boards and battery cells, among other parts essential for the production of its cars. The company has sought an exemption from the U.S. trade representative for equipment imported from China that it uses in its factories.

WATCH: Tariff fallout hits automakers