André Rieu would love to perform The Boss' hits onstage in his hometown of Maastricht.

Bobbi Storm features in the Grammy's 2024 Best Gospel Album nomination, 'The Maverick Way'

Meta has created a new system that it says can generate convincing speech in a variety of styles – but will not release it for fear of the risks. The new tool is called “Voicebox” and can be set to create outputs in different styles, new voices from scratch as well as with a sample. It makes speech across six languages, as well as a variety of other tools such as noise removal. It says that it is a major development on previous speech systems that required specific training for each task. Instead, Voicebox can just be given raw audio and a transcription, and then be used to modify an audio sample. It is far more effective than its competitors, Meta claimed in its announcement. It can generate words with a 5.9 per cent error rate compared to 1.9 per cent from competitor Vall-E, for instance, and do so as much as 20 times more quickly. Meta said that it had been built on the foundation of a new model it called “Flow Matching”. That allows the system to learn from speech that has not been carefully labelled, so that it can be trained on more and more diverse data. Voicebox was trained on 50,000 hours of speech and transcripts that came from public domain audiobooks in English, French, Spanish, German, Polish, and Portuguese, Meta said. Now that it has been trained, it can be given an audio recording and fill in the speech from the context, Meta said. That could be used to create a realistic sounding voice from just two seconds of speech, for instance, potentially being used to bring voices to people who cannot speak or to add people’s voices into games. It could also be used to translate a passage of speech from one lanagueg to another in a way that keeps the style, Meta said, allowing people to talk to each other authentically even if they don’t speak the same language. It could also be useful in more technical scenarios, such as audio editing, where it can be used to replace words that were not properly recorded, for instance. But Meta said that the risks were such that it would not be releasing the model. It did not point to specific harms, but said that “as with other powerful new AI innovations, we recognize that this technology brings the potential for misuse and unintended harm”. Numerous reports have warned that such systems could be used to copy people’s voices without their consent and in ways that could be harmful, such as creating fake videos of news events or using people’s voices to pose as them during scam calls, for instance. “There are many exciting use cases for generative speech models, but because of the potential risks of misuse, we are not making the Voicebox model or code publicly available at this time,” Meta said in a statement. “While we believe it is important to be open with the AI community and to share our research to advance the state of the art in AI, it’s also necessary to strike the right balance between openness with responsibility.” It also pointed to a separate paper, published on its website, in which it detailed how it had built a “highly effective” system that can distinguish between authentic speech and audio that had been generated with Voicebox. Read More Mark Zuckerberg reveals what he thinks about Apple’s headset – and it’s not good Meta scrambles to fix Instagram algorithm connecting ‘vast paedophile network’ Reddit user’s protests against the site’s rules have taken an even more bizarre turn

SOUTHFIELD, Mich.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jun 9, 2023--

OceanGate -- the owner of the Titan submersible which imploded during a voyage to the Titanic, killing five -- says it has suspended its exploration and commercial operations, according to its website.

By Donny Kwok and Casey Hall HONG KONG/SHANGHAI (Reuters) -Alibaba Group's Hong Kong shares slumped 10% on Friday after it

New York Giants Pro Bowl defensive tackle Dexter Lawrence was inactive for Sunday’s game against the New England Patriots because of a hamstring injury

Seamer Lockie Ferguson will captain New Zealand for the first time on the international stage during their three-match 50-overs tour of Bangladesh...

This year's Macy's event in Manhattan was briefly disrupted by a small pro-Palestinian demonstration.

By Katie Paul NEW YORK A former Meta employee is testifying before a U.S. Senate subcommittee on Tuesday,

Kim Cattrall has given her stamp of approval to Selena Gomez's TikTok tribute to Samantha Jones. The 67-year-old played the confident public relations professional in Sex And The City and recently reprised the fan-favourite character during a guest appearance in the season two finale of the spin-off series And Just Like That... But an iconic quote from Samantha Jones has been going viral on TikTok, from a SATC scene where a married lover of hers calls to inform that he has broken up with his wife - only for her not to recognise who he is. "I told my wife," the man said on the phone, to which Jones replied: "Who is this?" Many people have been miming the scene on TikTok, including Selena Gomez who made the video to promote her new single called Single Soon which dropped today (August 25). The video received over 43.2m and so managed to gain the attention of Cattrall herself. Taking to Twitter/X, the actor retweeted the clip and in the quote tweet wrote: "I approve this message," with the lip print emoji. Fans loved seeing Cattrall interact with Gomez's tribute to her character. Meanwhile, Catrall's And Just Like That cameo was 71 seconds long in a short but sweet appearance where she spoke to Carrie Bradshaw (Sarah Jessica Parker) on the phone from a taxi as she couldn't make it to New York to say her goodbye's to the apartment Carrie is moving out of due to her flight being delayed. Elsewhere, Selena Gomez video has fans convinced she's shading Justin Bieber and Selena Gomez wrapped in a blanket has become an instant meme. Sign up to our free Indy100 weekly newsletter Have your say in our news democracy. Click the upvote icon at the top of the page to help raise this article through the indy100 rankings.

Manchester City’s director of football Txiki Begiristain paid tribute to the “inspirational” Ilkay Gundogan after the midfielder’s long-expected free transfer to Barcelona was confirmed. The treble-winning captain turned down the chance to stay at City and is set to sign with Barca, who have set his buyout clause at 400million euros (£342m), until 2025 following the expiration of his existing contract. Gundogan, who was manager Pep Guardiola’s first signing in July 2016, signed off in style by lifting the Champions League earlier this month after victory over Inter Milan in his 304th and final appearance. “Ilkay has been a wonderful servant for Manchester City, and he leaves our club on a very special high having captained us to a historic treble,” said Begiristain. “He has played a huge part in the successes we have enjoyed in recent seasons and Ilkay’s intelligence, leadership and commitment to the club – both on and off the field – has been an inspiration to everyone. “Ilkay has truly cemented his place in the history of Manchester City and we all wish him well in the next chapter of his career.” During his seven years at City Gundogan won the Premier League five times, in addition to two FA Cups – this season scoring the quickest goal in final history at 12 seconds – four League Cups and the Champions League. “I have been lucky to have experienced so many unforgettable moments in my time here and to have been captain for this extra-special season has been the greatest experience of my career,” said the former Germany international. “First, I would like to thank Pep. To have been able to play under and learn from him for so long has been something I will never forget. “I would also like to thank all my team-mates – past and present – who have all played such a special part in making my time here so amazing. “Finally, I would like to thank the incredible City fans. They have supported me from the moment I arrived, and I owe them all so much for their support. “This club made me realise all my dreams and I will forever be thankful for this opportunity.”