Speaker 1: Thanks for calling United Airlines. I appreciate your help, but
Speaker 1: I would prefer to speak correctly with the representative. I'm
Speaker 1: having some issues with my flight booking that I think
Speaker 1: would be best resolved through a direct conversation. That's me
Speaker 1: on the phone recently. Well, it's not really me. It's
Speaker 1: a clone of my voice being fully controlled by an
Speaker 1: AI chatbot making a call using my phone number. I
Speaker 1: started playing around voice cloning six months ago, just for fun,
Speaker 1: but pretty soon I became consumed with a question, what
Speaker 1: would happen if I made an artificial version of me
Speaker 1: and set it loose in the world.
Speaker 2: Okay, fine, that was also a voice clone. This is
Speaker 2: me for real. I promise I won't keep doing that.
Speaker 2: I'm a journalist who's been writing about technology and it's
Speaker 2: sometimes dark underbelly for a couple of decades. You've no
Speaker 2: doubt heard about the latest debates around AI. Will it
Speaker 2: make us hyper productive or just take our jobs? Will
Speaker 2: it be our trusty digital assistant or super intelligent overlord,
Speaker 2: or just fill the world with endless made up garbage.
Speaker 2: Recently I decided to answer these questions by immersing myself,
Speaker 2: replicating myself actually in the form of cloned voice agents,
Speaker 2: replacing myself before someone else could replace me.
Speaker 1: Hello, Hey, Nikhil, Great to be chatting with you today.
Speaker 1: Do you have any questions about the podcast before we
Speaker 1: dive in?
Speaker 2: Oh, that's really funny.
Speaker 1: I'm glad you think so.
Speaker 2: My voice agents talked to sources, my friends and family,
Speaker 2: to scammers and spammers and other voice agents. I sent
Speaker 2: them to meetings and tried to use them to work
Speaker 2: out my issues.
Speaker 1: Feel free to share your thoughts on what you feel
Speaker 1: like doing based on your current bodily sensations. Honestly, I
Speaker 1: just feel like crawling under a blanket and shutting out
Speaker 1: the world.
Speaker 2: I learned something about how it's going to feel to
Speaker 2: live in a world populated by humanish impostors.
Speaker 1: Hey, I know this is kind of out of the blue,
Speaker 1: but have you buy any chance stolen my identity?
Speaker 2: Wait?
Speaker 1: What are you serious?
Speaker 2: No, I haven't stolen your identity.
Speaker 1: Why would you even think that? It's so lonely?
Speaker 2: I feel so lonely. I'm Evan Ratliffe, and I'm the
Speaker 2: real Evan Ratliffe. And this is shell Game, a new
Speaker 2: podcast made by humans about things that are not what
Speaker 2: they seem. This season that thing is my voice. This
Speaker 2: is the story of what happened when I made a
Speaker 2: digital copy of myself an attempt to see how amazing
Speaker 2: and scary and ridiculous the world is about to get.
Speaker 2: Coming July ninth, follow us and go to shell game
Speaker 2: dot co to find out more and support the show.
Speaker 1: It's gonna be a blast. Bye yeah bye, take care
Speaker 1: Bye goodbye.