Title | PROJECT REVOICE |
Brand | THE ALS ASSOCIATION |
Product / Service | PROJECT REVOICE |
Category | D02. Data Storytelling |
Entrant | BWM DENTSU Sydney, AUSTRALIA |
Idea Creation | BWM DENTSU Sydney, AUSTRALIA |
PR | HAYSTAC Sydney, AUSTRALIA |
Production | LYREBIRD Montreal, CANADA |
Production 2 | FINCH Sydney, AUSTRALIA |
Production 3 | NAKATOMI Sydney, AUSTRALIA |
Production 4 | RUMBLE STUDIOS Sydney, AUSTRALIA |
Additional Company | SPACE 66 Sydney, AUSTRALIA |
Name | Company | Position |
---|---|---|
Rob Belgiovane | BWM Dentsu | Chief Creative Officer |
Asheen Naidu | BWM Dentsu | Executive Creative Director |
René Schultz | BWM Dentsu | Senior Art Director |
Oskar Westerdal | BWM Dentsu | Senior Copywriter |
Emma Durlacher | BWM Dentsu | Onscreen Producer |
Eeuwout 'Dutchy' Baart | BWM Dentsu | Design Director |
Jenna Mills | BWM Dentsu | Creative Services Director |
Brett Ludeman | FINCH | Director |
Brendon Killen | BWM Dentsu | Editor |
Jason Carnew | Haystac | National General Manager |
Sarah Littlefair | Haystac | General Manager Haystac Sydney |
Alexandre de Brébisson | Lyrebird | Co-Founder and CEO |
Jose Sotelo | Lyrebird | Co-Founder |
Kundan Kumar | Lyrebird | Co-Founder |
David Dodero | Lyrebird | Head of Operations |
Corey Esse | FINCH | Executive Producer |
Claire Thompson | FINCH | Producer |
Emad Tahtouh | Nakatomi | Managing Director |
Cara Szabo | Nakatomi | Producer |
Hamish Pain | Nakatomi | Engineer |
Patrick Barnes | Nakatomi | Senior Engineer |
Ben Bray | Nakatomi | Interactive Team Lead |
Tone Aston | Rumble Studios | Sound Designer |
Cam Milne | Rumble Studios | Sound Designer |
Sha Toth | Rumble Studios | Post Producer |
Michael Gie | Rumble Studios | Music Producer |
Darren Lim | Rumble Studios | Composer |
Christopher Gregson | Space 66 | General Manager |
Elliot Owen | Space 66 | Creative Director |
In many ways, our voices are what make us human. For most patients losing the voice is particularly difficult as it’s such an integral part of one’s personality. Project Revoice gives people with ALS the ability to speak freely and naturally in their own voice, even after they can’t physically speak. To launch the program, we recreated the voice of Pat Quinn, who co-founded the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge while fighting the disease himself. Since Pat hadn’t backed up his voice in any way, we rebuilt his voice using audio data from Ice Bucket interviews and speeches found online. Going forward, this program will change how people live with ALS, allowing them to keep communicating as themselves, rather than through a proxy machine voice or a limited set of pre-recorded phrases.
Project Revoice is powered by a custom machine learning algorithm that can analyze the unique characteristics (or DNA) of a voice – including tone, pitch and inflections. With only 2-3 hours of transcribed audio data as raw material, this technology is able to create a complete digital voice clone that’s able to say anything in real-time via text input. To make this technology available to the wider ALS community, Project Revoice has built an online voice bank where ALS sufferers can easily record the voice data necessary for their own voice clones. By the end of 2018 these recordings will be used to create more ‘Revoices’, which users can access and ‘speak’ with through the website or a custom API, via their own Assisted/Augmentative Communication (AAC) devices. Project Revoice represents a major improvement in life quality for people with ALS. While the technology is currently limited to English-speaking patients only, the ultimate goal of the program is to prevent anyone diagnosed with ALS from losing their voice.