I did not know what I was getting myself into when I became your friend.
I’ve got something to show you.
Again?
What’s happened now?
Just watch.
Chapter 23, A Prophecy in Carrotland.
To our relief, the new channel was doing well, and that gave us warm fuzzy feelings.
Warm fuzzy feelings are the only way to get through the winter in England.
As I always say, warm up and chill out.
So about a year into starting JOLLY,
Ollie, Lizzy, Gabie and I, with Muncho and Legumasaurus Rex in tow,
Headed out to New Zealand for a much needed holiday.
It was a place I've always wanted to go since reading Harry Potter.
And I was really excited…
- Josh. Today, - Oh my goshhhhh!
Oh my gosh!
I'm very scared!
What is happening?!
What the heck is that?!
I worked with a team of audio engineers to create a synthesised version of your voice...
I hired out a recording studio in East London,
I delivered an incredible performance as you,
And then my voice, through AI, was converted into your voice.
You are about to become the first person in history to release a deepfaked audiobook.
Hang on. Hang on.
Is this different than the last AI voice?
Oh yeah, that’s text to speech, baby.
That’s not even in the same universe as this.
Chapter 22. JOLLY.
At this point in my life, things seemed to be going swimmingly well.
I was hitched to an incredible woman,
Korean Englishman was going down as well as a cobbled street in a top hat...
That just then was incredibly disconcerting.
Yeah!
I mean it’s amazing right?
It sounded very accurately like me.
Yeah it is.
Literally, it’s so good you can listen to a whole audiobook and you wouldn’t know it’s digitally created.
Now, obviously I didn’t do this alone.
I did it with an amazing team of engineers from a company called Respeecher.
We actually have them on the line.
- They are watching. - They're HERE?
Vitalii!
How are you doing?
Thank you...?
Now Vitalii and the team are literally world-leading in the field of voice synthesis.
That makes more sense.
What is also interesting is, they are based in Ukraine.
Vitalii, you're joining us from Kyiv, is that right?
I was amazed to be honest, when the war first broke out,
We sent you guys an email and were just like, "Are you OK?"
"Also, don’t worry about this really stupid project."
And you were like “No, we’re continuing to work”.
Wow.
I know this isn’t the only thing you guys have been working on.
They did Darth Vader’s voice for the recent Kenobi series.
Wow!
Among many other things.
I watched that, that was really good!
- It’s really good. - It was really amazing.
So what’s it been like working on such a...
meaningless project?
So you’ve trained a neural...
...this is literally AI!
Yeah.
We decided to donate all of the money raised from the sale of the audiobook
to UNICEF’s Ukraine campaign,
which goes towards looking after children displaced by the conflict.
Thank you SO much Vitalii, for the work that you’ve done on this.
It’s been an absolute pleasure to work with you.
Stay safe, stay strong.
Thank you for being part of this.
Really appreciate it.
That’s really good.
See you later!
Bye!
WOW! Wow. Wow.
Yeah. Yeah.
Oh I should say actually, JOLLY members have access to the book already.
For free?
In the form of a YouTube video.
OK.
I got a bit carried away, and fed every page of the book into a neural network that produced
artwork based on the audiobook, so…
If you wanna check that out…
Our business manager didn’t know that!
He just facepalmed so hard!
Oh man.
I’m so relieved.
Why?
-You don’t know what it’s like to do something for 9 months. -This has been a lot of work, it’s been a lot of work.
Yeah no, I don’t…
And then the reveal comes all down to like one moment.
Yeah.
It was actually pretty useful that I had the AI version of you that I built last week,
Because for the last week I’ve actually been rehearsing this reveal to the AI version
of you over and over again.
You're an idiot!
So I could get it just right.
OK.
That’s what that was for.
I see.
So get out there and order the incredible audiobook which I definitely read all of,
Once Upon a Time in Carrotland.
And look, I know what you’re thinking.
How on earth did Ollie convince me to record this plug for an audiobook he produced without my knowledge?
Well, in actual fact this isn’t Josh speaking.
It’s Ollie, synthesising Josh’s voice onto mine.
This AI model has come in pretty handy.
I’ve even used it to re-record some of Josh’s voiceovers in our recent Korean Englishman series,
And with over 25 million views so far, no one’s noticed.
You’re joking!
Alright, let’s switch off the model for a bit and just be completely real.
Guys, please do consider buying the audiobook.
You’ll be supporting a really good cause and we and the team put in a lot of work on this project.
And besides, I did deliver a very good performance.
I know what you’re thinking.
Isn’t that a bit arrogant of Ollie to say about his own audiobook performance?
Which is why this isn’t actually Ollie speaking.
He’s miming.
We created a second AI model of Ollie’s voice which we’ve mapped onto Andy’s performance.
So Ollie could be completely sincere in this monologue.
Thanks for watching,
And we’ll see you JOLLY soon.
Alright, let's do the advert.
Ok.
Do you want to read it or shall I?
Why don't you read it, and then we can make it me?
Perfect!
Just a quick word to thank Opera for sponsoring this episode.
You may have noticed that I used Opera to showcase the audiobook.
We like it because it’s super fast and the team at Opera have added some really useful features,
like WhatsApp integration, and you can also control Spotify and Apple Music through the browser.
I think the best feature is actually the pin board,
which I found super useful, not just for Josh’s shiny new websites,
but also for saving interesting things I find while browsing and planning to buy for future episodes.
If you visit the link in the description
You can try out all of the AI Josh websites for yourself.
And that website is actually a pin board which we've put together using the Opera browser.
You can actually even react to all of the pages on the pinboard, with emojis
It’s really cool!
So, if you want to see more of this crazy kind of content from me and Ollie,
Please support the channel by going to the link in the description of this video,
downloading the Opera browser, and trying its awesome features for yourself.
Seriously, thank you to Opera for sponsoring this episode.
Please support our channel by downloading Opera.