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| ▲ A photo of late rock singer Shin Hae-chul, provided by KCA Entertainment on May 3, 2024. (PHOTO NOT FOR SALE) (Yonhap) |
SEOUL, May 3 (Yonhap) -- Ten years after his passing in 2014, the late Shin Hae-chul is returning as an AI voice model named "AI 新 Hae-chul," which reads "AI Shin Hae-chul."
Next United announced on the 3rd that, ahead of Shin Hae-chul's 56th birthday on the 6th, it has unveiled a voice model developed using artificial intelligence-based technology on the YouTube channel 'Shin Hae-chul Official Channel TV'.
Next United holds all rights to Shin Hae-chul's intellectual property (IP), with his wife, Yoon Won-hee, as the representative.
The development of this AI model was spurred by traces found on Shin Hae-chul's PC, which included preparations for a new season of his famous radio program 'Ghost Station' that he worked on during his lifetime, as well as discovering a new opening signal.
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| ▲ A photo of late rock singer Shin Hae-chul, provided by Next United on May 3, 2024. (PHOTO NOT FOR SALE) (Yonhap) |
Typically, artificial intelligence-based voice synthesis requires a certain amount of voice data for training. However, since Shin Hae-chul passed away ten years ago, it was impossible to re-record his voice or read the optimal voice training script.
Next United preprocessed all available nurturing materials left by Shin Hae-chul through broadcasts, lectures, performances, etc., and separately implemented all voices as scripts to train the voice artificial intelligence model.
Extracting important sentences from a total of 270 hours of voice data, they reconstructed them into 6,757 sentences, and the pre-processing, which involved removing noise and restoring degraded sound quality, was achieved with the support of the game company Pearl Abyss.
Pearl Abyss has maintained a long-standing relationship with Shin Hae-chul, such as erecting a statue of him in the popular game 'Black Desert'.
Furthermore, metadata (data about data) was added to all data to distinguish voices, enabling the artificial intelligence model to express various tones and subtle emotions beyond simply imitating voices.
Only the words spoken directly by Shin Hae-chul were utilized in the voice training data. Shin Hae-chul's children, Ha-yeon and Dong-won, as well as photographer Kang Young-ho, who was close to the deceased during his lifetime, participated in the inspection.
Yoon Won-hee, CEO of Next United, conveyed, "The longing for his voice and message has brought 'AI New Hae-chul' voice model to the world," adding, "Technically, the approach was not about restoring the voice but rather focusing on creating the 'resonating voice' desired by family, friends, fans, and listeners."
The technology related to data preprocessing, training, and extraction was developed by Nam Gung-yeon, a broadcaster and musician who was close to the deceased, while Shin Byung-jin, a broadcast writer, transcribed and classified all nurturing materials into text.
Next United plans to prepare various contents such as a new season of "Ghost Station" following the release of the "AI New Hae-chul" voice model.
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| (Yonhap) |
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