All posts tagged: Cloning

xAI launches Grok 4.3 at an aggressively low price and a new, fast, powerful voice cloning suite

xAI launches Grok 4.3 at an aggressively low price and a new, fast, powerful voice cloning suite

Published by skeptic

While Elon Musk faces off against his former colleague and OpenAI co-founder Sam Altman in court, Musk’s rival firm xAI, founded to take on OpenAI, isn’t slowing down on launching competitive new products and services. Last night, xAI shipped a new, proprietary base large language model (LLM), Grok 4.3, and a new voice cloning suite on the web. The new products arrive after months of tumult from xAI that saw all of Musk’s 10 original co-founders of the lab and dozens more researchers exit the firm and Grok was eclipsed on performance by many new competing LLMs from the likes of OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, and Chinese firms DeepSeek, Moonshot (Kimi), Alibaba (Qwen), z.ai, and others. While Grok 4.3 does mark a significant leap in performance on third-party benchmarks over its direct predecessor Grok 4.2, according to the independent AI model evaluation firm Artificial Analysis, it still remains below the state-of-the-art set by OpenAI and Anthropic’s latest models. But the marquee feature of the Grok brand has — other than Musk’s stated opposition to “wokeness” and …

Why cloning anyone – even Jim Carrey – isn’t the best plan ever

Why cloning anyone – even Jim Carrey – isn’t the best plan ever

Published by skeptic

Feedback is New Scientist’s popular sideways look at the latest science and technology news. You can submit items you believe may amuse readers to Feedback by emailing feedback@newscientist.com Doubling up If the internet is to be believed (it’s not), a growing proportion of celebrities have been replaced by clones. The latest to allegedly have their body snatched is actor Jim Carrey, star of Ace Ventura: Pet Detective and other cinematic miracles. Carrey attended the 51st César Awards in Paris on 26 February, his first public appearance for some time, and he looked a bit different compared with before. One might think that this would be attributed to some combination of ageing and cosmetic procedures, but instead, a conspiracy theory formed that the person wasn’t Carrey, but a clone. Whoever is doing all this celebrity body snatching, they are busy: Carrey’s replacement follows those of Paul McCartney (supposedly dead since 1966 and replaced by a stand-in) and Avril Lavigne (allegedly dead since 2003). You would think that, by now, they would have got better at concealing …

I found an M.2 dock that handles SSD cloning without a computer – and with only one click

I found an M.2 dock that handles SSD cloning without a computer – and with only one click

Published by skeptic

Icy Box Docking and Clone Station pros and cons Pros It’s a dock and a cloning station Simple and reliable “one-button” HDD and SDD cloning Can handle SATA and M.2 SATA/NVMe drives. Cons Requires external power for cloning No time indicator for how long a cloning process will take. Follow ZDNET: Add us as a preferred source on Google. While the average user is unlikely to handle a bare SATA HDD or M.2 drive, anyone who builds or maintains PCs, or runs their own NAS systems, will be familiar with these drives. And there inevitably comes a time when you either want to move data from one drive to another, or you need an easy way to access a bare drive from a computer without dealing with enclosures and the like. Since I’m working hard to reduce desk clutter, if I can find a tool that does both things, I’ll go for it. And if I can get such a gadget for under $100 (because duplication stations can cost hundreds, or even thousands), then that’s a bonus.  …

Landmark experiment reveals a big unexpected problem with cloning

Landmark experiment reveals a big unexpected problem with cloning

Published by skeptic

Mice can only be repeatedly cloned for so long Xinhua/Zhou Qi/Imago/Alamy A clone is meant to be a genetically identical copy, but an extraordinary 20-year study has shown that this isn’t, in fact, the case. It reveals that clones have lots of extra mutations and, if you keep cloning clones, these build up to fatal levels. The findings have implications for the use of cloning in farming and for saving endangered animals, including efforts to recreate extinct species, as well as for the potential use of cloning technology in people. The big question is why there are so many more mutations in clones. It could just be that the adult body cells that are being cloned accumulate more mutations than egg or sperm cells do. But Teruhiko Wakayama at Yamanashi University in Japan thinks the cloning process itself could be causing at least some of them. “Unfortunately, however, while clones were once thought to be identical to the original, it has become clear that this is not the case, suggesting that there may be issues …

Loophole found that makes quantum cloning possible

Loophole found that makes quantum cloning possible

Published by skeptic

Backing up information on quantum computers is tricky RUSLANAS BARANAUSKAS/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/Alamy In quantum mechanics, the idea that quantum information can’t be duplicated is ironclad – or at least, it was. A surprising approach to backing up qubits, the basic units of quantum computers, appears to allow a sidestepping of this fundamental law of physics. The no-cloning theorem was first discovered by researchers in the 1980s. It says that quantum states that describe all the information about a system can’t be copied. Attempting to measure the information to copy it would simply destroy the delicate quantum properties that you want to measure. This fact has proved important for quantum technologies like encryption, leading to simple protocols that prevent information from being copied and hacked. Achim Kempf at the University of Waterloo in Canada and his colleagues have now shown that a quantum system can, in fact, be cloned, as long as the information about it is encrypted and enclosed with a special, one-off decryption key. “You can make a lot of copies and generate redundancy …

Qwen3-TTS vs ElevenLabs : Voice Cloning & Real-Time Streaming

Qwen3-TTS vs ElevenLabs : Voice Cloning & Real-Time Streaming

Published by skeptic

Is the text-to-speech world on the brink of a revolution? With the release of Qwen3-TTS, some are calling it the “ElevenLabs killer,” and for good reason. In this guide, Prompt Engineering explains how this open-weight model is redefining what’s possible in speech synthesis, from lifelike voice cloning to multilingual capabilities. Imagine creating a custom voice for your brand or generating emotionally rich narrations for a global audience, all with a few simple prompts. Qwen3-TTS isn’t just another TTS system; it’s a bold step toward making high-quality, real-time audio generation more accessible and versatile than ever before. But does it live up to the hype? This feature dives into the standout capabilities that set Qwen3-TTS apart, like its ability to replicate voices with minimal input or craft entirely new ones through detailed descriptions. You’ll also discover how its scalable architecture balances performance and efficiency, making it suitable for everything from gaming to live customer interactions. Whether you’re intrigued by its promise of emotionally resonant audio or curious about its potential to challenge industry giants, this breakdown …

AI Voice Open Source App Chatterbox Features Zero-Shot Cloning

AI Voice Open Source App Chatterbox Features Zero-Shot Cloning

Published by skeptic

What if you could generate speech so lifelike, it’s almost indistinguishable from a human voice, all without relying on costly, proprietary software? Open source AI voice synthesis has reached a new milestone, offering developers and creators unprecedented possibilities. In this breakdown, Prompt Engineering walks through how the Chatterbox Turbo model by Resemble AI delivers high-quality, customizable voice generation that rivals even the most advanced commercial systems. With features like zero-shot voice cloning, multilingual support, and nuanced emotion control through paralinguistic tags, this innovation is redefining synthetic speech. Best of all, it’s available for local use under a permissive MIT license, making innovative voice synthesis more accessible than ever. This deep dive unpacks the standout features that set Chatterbox Turbo apart in the rapidly evolving world of AI voice technology. From its multilingual voice cloning capabilities that enable global applications to its watermarking feature addressing ethical concerns, this model is designed with both functionality and responsibility in mind. Its expressive audio generation capabilities open up new creative possibilities, offering unparalleled control over tone and emotion. Whether …