Aflorithmic Nabs $1.3M for AI-Driven Personalized Audio-As-A-Service – Barcelona, and London based audio-as-a-service SaaS startup Aflorithmic has scooped up $1.3 million in seed funding from Crowd Media Holdings, an Australia-based company focused on influencer-based ‘social commerce’ and marketing.
It’s taking a 10% stake in Aflorithmic, per a press release, where it says the strategic investment is aimed at enabling it to offer FaceTime conversations with celebrities through “best-in-class voice cloning technology”.
Aflorithmic Nabs $1.3M for AI-Driven Personalized Audio-As-A-Service
Two-year-old Aflorithmic may not have chosen a name that trips off the tongue but it’s all about speech and audio. It’s built a platform that offers fully automated, scalable audio production by using AI-driven synthetic media, (“ethical”) voice cloning, and audio mastering — which can be delivered to people’s ears via websites, mobile apps, smart speakers, and so on via its APIs.
“Text in beautiful audio out” is its pithy slogan.
Sample clips on its website illustrate the personalization element with synthesized (robot-voiced) voice-overs greeting a named customer before plunging into the detail of whatever content it’s been programmed to deliver.
Some of Aflorithmic’s current customers are using its tools to create audiobooks for kids, for the personalized narration of wellness/nutrition programs, and even a robot butler concierge service for hotel guests, to name a few. Its business thesis is that demand for audio far outstrips the ability of studio-produced human-spoken voiceovers to deliver.
Hence it reckons synthesized media will be needed to plug the demand gap — serving up infinite permutations of a voice track, each one personalized to a particular customer of the brand or enterprise.
In the avenue, the popularity of podcasts and live-voice streaming shows no sign of abating — speaking to the staying power of audio in a video-heavy era.
