Transcript

Meet “Reid-ish”: The Story of Cloning Reid Hoffman’s Voice

The very best founders I know are brilliant at building systems. They connect teams, they remove bottlenecks, and they eliminate single points of failure. And yet When it comes to their own wealth. Most are running a disconnected stack. A tax accountant here and a state attorney there, a wealth manager who doesn't talk to either one of them.

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Hey folks, Jeff Berman here. I am thrilled to share some of the new names who will be joining us at this year's Masters of Scale summit. This may be our biggest stage yet. Reed Hastings, Meredith Whitaker, Van Jones, Amjad Masad, and more. Will be there with us October 20th through 22nd in San Francisco. If you're building something great, or you want to build something great, We want you there with us too.

Join us at masters of scale dot com slash apply twenty six. That's mastersofscom slash apply. Twenty six. Let me test the zoom levels. Uh

Testing one two three. Okay, those seem to be all right. That's your founding host of Masters of Scale. Read Hoffman. He's at his home office with a laptop open and a microphone set up.

Two producers are standing by in their zoom squares. Let me get the coffee. And water actually I guess coffee. Mm-hmm always great on the voice. Well I'll still have a little bit of it.

He settles into his chair. And gets ready to record some voiceover for the show. Just making sure it works. Ta-da, here we go, and then Mm Oh

Quick time. And two little pickups. Read turns to the script. And starts recording.

Often it's smooth sailing. But sometimes. That's Jesse Barry. An ornithologist at the corno of the That's Jesse Berry.

An ornithologist at the Cornell Lab. Let me just make sure oh yeah, Cornell. That's Jesse Berry, an ornithologist at the Cornell Cornell Lab. Mm. Reed is an investor, an entrepreneur, a philosopher, a patriot. And a great friend.

But he'd be the first to say he is not a voiceover artist. Over time. The deaf rise. Over time, the definition of Over time.

The definition expanded. To refer to anyone. Real or imaginary. Over time.

The different Over time, the definition Recording voiceover can be time and labor intensive, even for the pros. At Masters of Scale, we might update scripts at any time as stories develop. So when Reed travels, which you can imagine is quite often

He takes a microphone with him. And he needs a super quiet space wherever he is. Good voiceover work also means getting into the right mindset. When you hit record, you have to match the tone of the story at hand, no matter what's going on in your life. Not to mention everyday hazards like a frog in your throat, a dog barking outside.

We're suffering from a cold that has you sniffling between sentences. What But imagine you could ensure a result like this every time. No stumbles. No X factors.

Over time, the definition expanded to refer to anyone, real or imaginary, who serves as a source of inspirational fuel for For the creative process. That is an AI version of Reed Hoffman's voice. About a year ago, Reed dove into fulling his voice through a process powered by artificial intelligence. Like a lot of AI technologies, it has improved dramatically.

In a remarkably short amount of time. It's basically indistinguishable from human read, sitting in real time at the microphone. I'm Reed Hoffman. Co-founder of LinkedIn. Partner at Greylock.

And your host. So we want to tell you the story of this technology. to better understand it. You'll hear from Reed, from me, from our production staff, and from the voice cloning company we're working with called ReSpeecher.

Voice cloning is a tool that offers scaling potential for so many things, including this very show. It's also a tool with major implications we must grapple with. Not just an audio. But far beyond. Well we can talk about AI. We can talk about it. When most people think about AI, they think about killer robots. Things are changing every couple of months. AI is at an infection point. It is a switch. It's like we have power tools now. And we'll just keep figuring it out. Generative AI is the most excited I've been about anything in software since the internet.

It's definitely a super exciting time to be in this space. All of these things are possible. Let's try to figure out whether this is actually useful or not. The tech just shouldn't replace human beings. Is it the worst thing in the world, or is it the greatest thing in the world? This is masters of scale.

I'm Jeff Berman. Your host. One of the goals here at Masters of Scale has always been to democratize lessons in entrepreneurship. Rooted in the experience of LinkedIn co-founder and legendary investor Reed Hoffman. We do in depth interviews with business leaders.

The scheduling of and preparation for those interviews can take months. After the interview comes an intensive process of editing. Writing, sound design. And Recording scripts of voiceover to connect the dots the episode.

The voiceover step can be tough for a lot of reasons. But now we have a full clone of Reed's voice. And we're exploring how to use it on Masters of Scale. This is a synthetic voice trained on the sound and cadence of Reed speaking. Hi, listeners.

If you're interested in experimenting with AI like we are, then I want to invite you and your team to join us this week on February twenty night. But it doesn't generate original content. As an early adopter of new technology, Reed not only cloned his voice, he also made a generative video version of himself called Reed AI. Hello, everyone, I'm thrilled to be here today. I'm an AI generated version of Reed Hoffman, his digital twin. My thinking and everything I am saying comes from a custom GPT that is based on twenty years of Reed talking and making content. Reed appears on a split screen, going back and forth on camera with an expressive, vivid digital twin.

So first I'm gonna challenge Read AI. With some questions. See. What it can do.

Let's take a real piece of work from me, blitz scaling. I wrote a three hundred and thirty six page book. And How do you explain it in one sentence? Well five year old.

For a five year old. Split scaling is like building the biggest tower super fast before anyone else, even if it gets a bit messy, so you can be the leader of the tower game. As a listener, you might already be trying to figure out in your head which read is which. Is what you're hearing one of several synthetic versions, or is it read? Live and in person.

Well I sat down with Reed, human Reed. To talk more about why he's exploring all of this so ambitiously. Ready when you are. Hi Reed. Hey Jeff.

We are getting together after you released kind of a mind blowing video of you interviewing an AI version of yourself and that AI version of yourself interviewing you. I'm curious how the idea for that came about. So the idea was

Obviously most of the time that people have been talking about digital twins, most of that discussion has been in the fear and oh my God, it's gonna be the end of Hollywood and all this disaster and storm is coming So the idea was Yeah. What some of the positive use cases are.

sharing the journey, sharing the learning, sharing the exploration With an emphasis But of course Navigating

Concerns and experiences as well. For as long as you've been hosting Masters of Scale, I know it's been a labor of love. But there's a labor part of it. Um, and so could you talk a little bit about what we're experimenting with a synthetic read AI voice? Look. If I can figure out how to have tools make it a lot more efficient for me in terms of how I'm doing work and all the rest.

That's a good thing. I use a phone for that, I use computers for that. If you say, Well look, why am I using this, it's well cause I can address like a set of commentary that I otherwise I don't have time for. Or I can show some lens into the future which is helpful to our audience.

Or Um I can go into more depth. And produce. More content that hopefully. some number of people will really like.

That I wouldn't have otherwise have time to do. Because by the way. I sometimes have somebody who writes a speech for me and I give a speech. And no, I don't go and by the way, sentence X was from Susan and sentence Y was from Bob. You know.

I go, okay. I'm giving the speech and I've worked with a team to hopefully get it right, but like you don't have to go Susan generated line three and Bob generated line seven, or GBD generated line ten. So When you think about taking a synthetic AI voice and being able to approve a script and then have it read and have it be indistinguishable for the audience, that feels like a tremendous use case here. A thousand percent.

The General principle. is if what you're doing is legitimately trying to To do more Or valuable things.

For other people. Then I think you will be broadly on the right path. An AI voice clone allows Reed and Masters of Scale to fulfill our mission of getting more business lessons and storytelling out in the world. It does have trade offs, and we'll get to those.

But there's also value. Including for our producers. Delivering successful voiceover is such a remarkable talent and skill. That's our Masters of Scale executive producer, Eve Trow. But there's also just

The statistical probability that someone who has brilliant things to say and important lessons to share will be good at that specific skill of reading text from a page and deliberating in the voice. It's very low. And it can Take An hour.

A couple paragraphs. Oof, it's hard work. Also, there's the matter of vocal quality. Here's producer Alex Morris. I'm thinking about

specific times where readers had a cold and we've said, maybe we should pause recording, because even though this is naturally organically read right now speaking, It doesn't sound like the read massive scale read voice that we know. Then there are the last minute pickups. We're talking about accurate. information here.

whether it's a lesson on business, or to get the pronunciation of someone's name. You may have to, and I have had to Wake up a host. At a very odd hour. Call someone, text them at two in the morning so that they can say three words.

So that's The story going out. And is that the best use of everyone's time and energy? To me, if there were a magic bullet that could change just those three words.

So that they could be correct in the host voice. I think that would be a good use of that magic bullet. Well that magic bullet seems to be here, and it's courtesy of a company based in Ukraine called Respeitcher. They're the ones who cloned Reed's voice, and they do not underestimate the impact of their work. The basic limitation of a human being in front of microfon is now

Removed. That's Alex Sirduke, founder of Re Speecher and their CEO. The idea for Re speecher started at an IT hackathon in Kiev. Most participants were focused on visual recognition. But Alex and his co-founder had a different goal.

Uh Create a very simple model that would let one person speak in the voice of another person. They won the hackathon. And a few years later, their model grew into Ree speecher. A company that creates synthetic versions of actual human voices.

A lot of their projects involve T V and movies. Remarkably, often bringing dead voices. Thank you. Thank you very much. It's here's an honor to be here with y'all on America's Got Time.

Mm. We were on America got talent in the voice of Elvis Presley. I have to tell you, we're gonna do a couple of our biggest records for you. You were at Superbow in twenty twenty one in the voice of Vince Lombardi. Because it's not and we get knocked down.

But when do we get that up? Even actor Jimmy Stewart. Whose voice has been revived for a bedtime story. on the Meditation app. Calm.

Well Hello. I'm James Stewart. But Well

You can call me Jimmy. Tonight I'm going to tell you a story. Re speecher works closely with companies that own these brands and intellectual property. And there are applications beyond entertainment. Re speecher helps individuals with medical complications.

We can change quality of lives of people who have speech disorders. Back in twenty twenty two we Tried our first rough real time models on patients with

Lar injectom yeah. And those who'd be in danger if their real voices were heard. you often need to anonymise Victims of a crime for a documentary or whistleblowers. Usually it's been done with voice morphers. Which make it sound bad, like really bad. It's really hard to understand the sound and emotions.

From his home in Kiev, Ukraine. Alex can imagine Re speecher helping victims of war crimes tell their stories more safely. And he's proud of his company's ethics. He said they've had no reported cases of misuse. And they do not take clients for political ads.

Last year Reed hired the team at Re speecher to create a synthetic voice. For himself. There are hundreds of hours of read hosting masters of scale. So data was not a problem. But re speecher doesn't turn text into speech.

That's the technology behind vocal assistance that might sound more robotic. Like Alexa in Siri. Re speecher uses human voiceover artists who deliver the lines. We understood that. Look, let's take

From humans what they do best. Humans are amazing in performing because we were born with this vocal apparatus and use it on daily basis. Voice over artists perform with emotion. Unique pauses and other quirks in their voices. Then that audio file gets a filter.

powered by the AI model to sound like the actual person you want to replicate. Here's an early draft of Reed's synthetic voice. For Isaac Newton, it was an apple falling from a tree that supposedly led him to formulate the law of universal gravity. A little stuffy, right? A bit off.

Here's a further iteration from Respeecher. For Benjamin Franklin, it was a key on a kite string struck by lightning in a thunderstorm. That proved electricity could be transferred and stored. Deeper. More casual.

More like read. The original use case for this was to make an audiobook. specifically Reed's twenty twenty three work called Impromptu. Amplifying humanity through AI. So using an AI voice.

to record a book about AI. Makes sense, right? Listeners got the voice of Reed without the dozens of hours it would have taken him to record reading it. Here's a sample of how it turned out. My query to GPT-4 was not the first time I'd asked an LLM to create a light bulb joke for me.

Earlier GPTs can freeze up like an amateur at an open mic night. Read. How many restaurant inspectors does it take to change a light bulb? GPT three. Only one.

but the life bulb has to want to change. That robot should keep its day job. But the technology has come even further since then. When we did the book we used models we most probably don't use anymore. When we have to listen to a sound we created.

Yeah. We really feel bad. We we want to remake the voice, and that's the case when we could reach out to a production company and and just say can we please do it again? Just replace the vocal track. We would do it for free, we just want it to to be better on the current level of quality. Coming up. The Masters of Scale team does a test drive with the latest version of Re Speecher. And so

How press do you want me? More than normal? And we ponder the vast implications. That's after the break. When you've built substantial wealth through your business, it's often tied up in a single equity position.

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The Wired Newsroom is known for award-winning reporting on how technology shapes our world. On Wire's Uncanny Valley, we take that curiosity even further. Each week, journalists from Wired break down the biggest stories in tech while speaking directly with the people building, challenging, and reshaping the future. Is the AI boom sustainable? How do you protect your privacy in an age of constant surveillance?

Uncanny Valley tackles the questions driving today's tech debates and lighting up your group chats. Listen to new episodes every Thursday. Wherever you get your podcasts. Humans will never be more intelligent than AI. There's gonna be two types of companies.

Those were great at AI and those that went out of business because they weren't. How do we build a future? That is human centered. I'm Rana El Chayubi. And on my podcast, Pioneers of AI, we answer that question and so many more. As an AI scientist, entrepreneur, and investor, I know what it takes to build AI that works for everyone.

Every week I sit down with the pioneers shaping our future. and we take you behind the scenes of the AI that's transforming our lives. Find pioneers of AI wherever you tune in. Okay. Before we get even deeper into the world of Reed's vocal clone, it only seems fair.

To give it a name. Read you've referenced your digital twin. Is that how we should think about an AI generated read voice, or or would you want us to think about it differently? Digital twins okay. It wasn't really the language I generated that was That was the team doing it? It's kind of a little bit of an industry parlance.

That I think is A little strange. You know, it is good to have something that that is both like read, but also read ish. 'Cause there's English and Redish. Ish is kind of a

A suffix people say, No, do you think that this is a complete catastrophe? It's like well, ish. Love it. Read ish it is. Now to better ponder what we're truly getting into.

Producers Eve Tro. Juliette Luini and Alex Morse logged into our Respeitcher account and got to work. Okay, I am rolling again. So We're making these recordings. And then we're going to feed them into Re speecher.

Okay. Right. Kinda nerve wracking. I know. And I'm like sweating like Reed probably does in his recording sessions.

Alex, are you ready to play Reed Hoffman? I'm ready. Our producers tried out what is somewhat awkwardly called the speech to speich process. Hearing how realistic read-ish sounds filtered through each of their voices. I'm Reed Hoffman is a strange thing to say.

because I am not Reed Hoffman. But This is the technology we're thinking of using, so I'm going to go for it. I'm Reid Hoffman. Co founder of LinkedIn.

Partner at Greylock. And your host. And I believe and I believe and I believe. We've uploaded our audio files, all three examples. Now

Tell me where we're at. Now it is converting our original audiophile into Read Hoffman. And it'll take like five minutes, hopefully.

That's like Kinda surprising to me, like five minutes. I genuinely thought it was gonna be something where it's like twenty four hours and then they send you some sort of a file, like I'm shocked. Like that's like pretty close to real time. Yeah, it's like It's about the amount of time you would need to upload a big audio file.

And convert it to Any other format. It's ready. Do you wanna just play it? Do it.

I'm so excited to hear. How it picks up. Alex's accent. I'm Reed Hoffman. Co founder of LinkedIn, partner at Greylock, and your host.

And I believe you need to amplify. the unique stories of your community and your customers. Doing so will build a foundation of trust and Loyalty an enduring impact. Wow.

Okay. I My first thought is that Hearing Reed's voice, but with my specific accent, it sounded to me like he was like a London gangster. It was like a guy Richie film. I was like, he He was like one of the Cray twins.

I'm honestly so impressed at how I'm literally like that was Reed Hoffman with a British accent. If he was making fun of me, he would do that. Obviously For an American to do a British accent.

is a very safe voice that you can do. Right? in terms of cultural appropriation. We're gonna have to start having conversations about where's the line, what can you do? And I don't know, like what feels insensitive. Yeah, that's a good point. It brings up these issues of authenticity. You can pretend to be another nationality, another gender that you are not.

And it's so easy. As a media producer, I'm just immediately so excited about the technology that I need someone Two prompt the discussion of the dangers of it like that, like that question of authenticity and and identity. Then I think oh right, yes.

That's right. This could be used for Other things that Are not so great. But Because we're so focused on what we're aiming to use it for, I think it just makes me pretty giddy.

Okay, let's hear yours. I'm Reed Hoffman. Co founder of LinkedIn, partner at Greylock, and your host. And I believe you need to amplify the unique voices of your community and your customers. Doing so will build a foundation of trust, loyalty, and enduring impact.

Okay, we are all holding back. Explosive laughter right now. That was Unpleasant to listen to. I wouldn't say it was unpleasant to listen to. It just didn't sound didn't sound like Reeve but

He was like, Hey, well, here I go, I guess. I know. No pressure. Okay. I'm read

It is rude to say. But it also did sound like my voice had a Undertone of fear in it. Which I don't know if that comes across day to day, but for some reason. You're thinking, Do I sound like a a fearful woodland creature in my everyday conversation? No, I don't think you do. Yeah, I mean that's was Nuts is I think I thought this was gonna feel like we're doing an impression of Reed Hoffman, but I actually felt like Reed was doing a mean impression of us.

Yeah. Oh accurate. Should we hear the the other one? I'm Reid Hoffman. Co founder of LinkedIn, partner at Graylock, and your host.

And I believe you need to amplify the unique stories of your community and your customers. Doing so will build a foundation of trust, loyalty, and enduring impact. Wow. It's it I can tell that it's me because I know how I say things and also my cadence.

But I don't know. But you guys say. I wanna play with the pitch. And see if I can move the pitch down because I think You Eve did a very good read Hoffman, actually.

So I clicked a plugin and it says regeneration settings pitch shift and it has a scale from negative twelve all the way to positive twelve. And we can play around with this scale to change the pitch. If we did like a negative six, I feel like it would be really good. I feel like that's gonna sound like spot on, actually. So Maybe we should try that now? Let's do it. I'm Reed Hoffman.

co-founder of LinkedIn. Partner at Greylock. And your host. And I believe you need to amplify the unique stories of your community and your customers. Doing so will build a foundation of trust, loyalty, and enduring impact. Let's go.

Yeah. It was really good. I feel like you get the sort of downward ending of sentences like Reed does, and that's where it really sounded like him. That to me was pretty spot on. I think that's the best one so far for sure.

Picture a vast library with sections for every genre you can imagine. You can find escapism in the romance and sci-fi sections. Points of reflection and memoir and poetry. I to be quite honest still don't know how I feel about it. I think we were in a really interesting position because

You know, w we're working with one of the pioneers of AI technology. It means we're encouraged more than I think most places to kind of experiment with it. Even when you're experimenting I think it f still feels like that there's stakes there and we wanted to make sure that we were always

fully conscious of what we were doing and what we were creating. One of the ways that We're putting guardrails on the use of the technology. Is that the script is still written by writers, researched by researchers, vetted by Reed, and signed off on

Editorially. And we're really Putting a lot of importance on that. And

A big part of the integrity. That gives us license to use Re speecher because we are really thinking of it as a technical production tool. Rather than displacing any intellectual or creative labor.

I think that's a great point, and I think that is a really important line to draw. Staff writer Dan Nealin chimes in on that front. Because generative AI, AI that is creating content, gets a lot of the headlines. When people hear AI, that's immediately what they think of. They think of a model that is producing Written word or audio or video.

Whatever it is. underlining that the AI we are using is purely a production tool. And the intellectual content of the show is remaining the same and is remaining

directly tied to read, really making sure the audience understands that. is a huge Thing for me. in particular as a creative and as a writer, is I want people to know we're not handing over the keys to the car. We're just like

I can't extend this metaphor anymore. Changing the paint job. Associate producer Masha Mako Tunina was also concerned about ethics. Івен і на іншлангу в гад має вор. Maybe it was read, maybe it was approved by you, but not technically said by you. And suddenly like it's a Pandora box.

But my relationship with this technology also was affected when I heard the way Reed talks about it, and when I hear the case that Reed makes for the use of his voice. The person whose voice we are using being so enthusiastic about it. I think it's the main Puzzle piece that is important for this case.

Reed's been releasing digital twins of himself into the world one by one. Whether it's our read ish voice from Re Speecher. Where the full generative video presence he calls read AI. From eleven labs an hour one. The value is you can do a bunch of things where

I can have superpowers that I don't know. For example, I would love to speak more languages. I am not gonna spend the time. In order to do it.

But the ability to say hey. I've got content that might be interesting or useful, like about entrepreneurship in a number of different languages. More humanized into What is Reed like when he speaks Chinese or French or Italian or Spanish?

Or German, you know, all of those things are, I think, good things. As opposed to the hey I can care less and pay less attention. It's so that I can actually accomplish more in ways that matter for people. That's, I think, the general use of everything from read AI down to synthetic voices. Even for the positive use cases, the deployment of a synthetic voice clone raises important questions around disclosure. Whether and when people should know.

they're hearing AI generated audio. This entire behind the scenes episode exists because we are committed to transparency. But those standards are hardly codified in our industry. one of the big questions that we're wrestling with, and I know you're wrestling with, and and hopefully everyone in in this industry is wrestling with Is what what do the listeners have a right

To know. So wh when you think about like a listener's bill of rights. What do you think is in that One principle

is Truth telling slash anti deception. If you are using A digital twin of your image, your voice.

You should be signaled in some way. It doesn't necessarily have to be like glar lights in the background. Right. But like Clearly. Not hidden.

I don't think it has to be like Like an exact accounting. These three sentences. Were Nan.

Digital. Reed and these three sentences were Reed himself. And it's like no no no no. You can choose how deeply you go. It's just kind of more of a Okay, you're being forthright with me. About how your Producing.

Is that sort of an equivalent to almost a names have been changed to protect the innocent disclaimer at the top of a of a film or something like that? Is that how you think about that? Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Or this is based on real events, but has been fictionalized. It's like okay. Great. You're making sure that I don't go it is all real.

Right. Or it is all fiction. You'd have to sort it out. If it matters to you, you're gonna have to look into it some. Yeah. It's a question of

Do you stand by it? Movies. Don't go. And there were computer graphics. In this film.

Like We all know those computer graphics they don't actually say this film or that film or'cause it's a natural part of the production process. If something's generated since Reed says X and Reed never looked at it. Then it's like well We can't then say read set X.

Right. We say Reed says X all kinds of time. We've done a master's scale for every single episode which has been written by a writer Just to be clear, this is not new ground for us. look, do I own it in that way and is an authentic offering to people? And that really, really matters. Are we legitimately and with high integrity trying to be really, really good to our community and our listeners?

If one thing is clear We are not underthinking this. We have this groundbreaking technology ready to go. We have sign off, even enthusiasm from the source. We are going to use it.

And we're going to disclose it. Whether that's in the episode audio, the show notes, or some embedded metadata option that comes along. We don't yet know. That conversation is just starting. We hope you'll stay tuned.

I'm Jeff Berman. Thank you for listening. This is Reedish. Signing off. Or is it?

No, it is. I've come a really long way. Hey listeners, Bob here. If you listen to Rapid Response on Masters of Scale, you may be missing half the show. Because every Friday we release a second rapid response exclusively in the Rapid Response feed. The guests and topics are just as compelling and timely from Ford's CEO to NASA's administrator to the lessons from The Devil Wears Prada. It takes about 10 seconds to find, just search rapid response wherever you listen to podcasts and hit follow to make sure you never miss an episode.

I hope to see you there. Masters of Scale is a weight watt original. Our executive producer is Eve Tro. The production team includes Tucker Ligurski. Masha Makatanina.

And Brandon Klein. Special thanks to Juliette Lueney, who produced this episode. Mixing and Mastering by Aaron Bostonelli and Brian Pew. Original music by Ryan Holliday. Our head of podcast is Letal Malad.

Visit mastersofscale.com to find the transcript for this episode. And to subscribe to our newsletter. And to read our team's proposed standards for AI and audio. It's mastersofscale.com Slash

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