New Clubhouse feature turns your texts into personalized voice messages

Clubhouse, the once-popular live audio app, announced today that users can now send text messages to their friends and they will hear those texts in the sender’s personalized voice.

To stay relevant as users opt out, Clubhouse launched group voice chats where members can send each other asynchronous voice messages, and they will appear in a format like Instagram Stories.

With today’s announcement, the company acknowledges that you may not be able to send voice messages to yourself. So you can train your personalized voice, send SMS and your friends will hear the message in the recreated voice. The app shows an indicator to your friends when the AI ​​voice reads a message.

Image credits: Clubhouse

In a blog postthe company said this feature still makes it feel like you’re in a real-time conversation with a friend.

“Imagine you send a message to a friend, but on the other end they hear your words as if you actually said them. Your personalized voice makes speaking, typing or reading and listening seamless, so you never lose that feeling of being in a live conversation,” the company said.

Clubhouse claims that its AI is able to recreate your voice close to the original even when you train it by reading just a few sentences. The company said the AI ​​couldn’t recreate your laugh well (so maybe don’t type hahaha?).

Image credits: Clubhouse

The company can also generate a voice alone if you are not comfortable recording your voice. The startup didn’t specify any details, but it would likely be a text-to-speech model.

Currently, this feature is only available in the United States at the moment.

Usage of the app has declined in recent years. He lifted a trick for the last time at a valuation which would be 4 billion dollars. In recent years he has had several layoffs. But last year, the company claimed to have there are a few years left. The company is now experimenting with AI-powered features to facilitate conversations between friends, hoping that users will stick around.

Notably, last year Apple released a feature called Personal Voice, which creates a voice that sounds like you. This is especially helpful for people who are at risk of losing their ability to speak vocally due to illnesses like ALS.