In Spain, that’s how we are: something is invented with the potential to change humanity, and we use it for memes and laughter. A bit like when the “Hijo de la Tomasa” said he was going to kill us all, and we started laughing at him. Now it’s happening with artificial intelligence: you can’t give a toy to Twitter because in less than a day, they’ve already broken it, and it becomes a simple routine.
I dance the Chuminero when I feel like it
The app in question is called Rask, and it allows voice dubbing in 60 languages immediately while maintaining the tone and timbre of the original voice. So, for example, we have videos of Paquita Salas speaking in Italian, memes from ‘Sálvame‘ in English (“We had a night of love”), and even classic Internet videos (“La he liao parda”) in any other language.
Okay, yes, the voices don’t sync with the lips (for now), and the translation is sometimes a bit poor, but with such a fun toy for free, we’re not giving it up that easily. By the way, it was started by @norcoreano with Belén Esteban’s visit to ‘La resistencia‘ speaking perfect Oxford English.
It’s all fun, that’s true, until it’s not. I hate to be the one to pour cold water on it, but all these jokes have a deeply negative aspect: the tool’s freeness is just an initial way to normalize its use through memes and then sneak into the offices of unscrupulous individuals who, to save a few bucks, are willing to use Rask instead of paying translators and voice actors.
The same thing happened with images: very amusing in memes, very dangerous in real life because they can take jobs away from much more talented illustrators than a simple robot. But, what do the employers care about that? Ultimately, that’s the big problem.
