Wearables for dropping beats, not pounds

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Good morning, and welcome to Protocol Next Up. This week, we're getting ready to shred some air guitar AR-style, and AI is teaching our favorite actors new languages.
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Forget step counting and heart tracking: Swiss consumer hardware startup Mictic has developed a wearable device to make music and play with 3D soundscapes. Add AR or VR to the mix, and Mictic may just be a key to unlocking the immersive and interactive audio experiences in the future.
At its core, Mictic is a wristband that pairs with a phone. It packs a bunch of sensors, including an accelerometer, gyroscope and magnetometer, which are used to trigger sounds with less than 20 milliseconds latency. Users strap one band on each wrist, with an option to add a pair to their ankles. Then it's time to move and make the magic happen.
Mictic initially planned to ship the product in time for the upcoming holidays, but COVID-19 forced the company to adjust its timeline. Now, the startup expects the bands to be commercially available by next June, with a target price of around $100 per pair. Mictic is looking to open an office in Los Angeles in the coming weeks to strike up partnerships with musicians and influencers.
Mictic looks fun, but wait for the future. Audio will be key to the first generation of consumer AR glasses, and music games are already hugely popular on VR headsets. Adding wrist-worn sensors to the mix could help unlock a whole new range of audio-visual experiences. Imagine playing with AR audio objects that are being visualized in real-time in your living room.
"Twitter acquired Vine for $30 million (TikTok currently valued at $180 billion) and Periscope for $75 million (Twitch acquired for $1 bn, probably worth $10+ [bn] now). Talk about a clown car driving into a gold mine." —Twitter user Quantian reacting to the news that Twitter is shutting down its livestreaming app Periscope.
"Forgot Periscope was still a separate product." —LightShed analyst Rich Greenfield reacting to the same story.
The lockdowns this year have transformed our homes into offices, schools, concert halls, movie theaters and gyms. Our homes are working harder for us, but so is our technology. The device that is working the hardest is perhaps the TV—becoming our lifeline to a far more virtual world.
Tel Aviv-based startup Deepdub wants to help streaming services gain new subscribers around the globe with the help of artificial intelligence. Deepdub, which came out of stealth on Wednesday, has built technology that can translate a voice track to a different language, all while staying true to the voice of the talent. This makes it possible to have someone like Morgan Freeman narrate a movie in French, Italian or Russian without losing what makes Freeman's voice special and recognizable.
Deepdub has been in conversations with a number of potential Hollywood clients, according to Deepdub CMO Oz Krakowski. "People's jaws are dropping to the floor," he said, adding that industry insiders especially value the ability to adjust the voice of an AI-generated dubbing track. "We call it voice design," he explained.
Deepdub has published an impressive demo video on YouTube. Krakowski recently gave me some more context on how the company's technology works:
Deepdub isn't the only company looking to use AI for dubbing and voice localization.
AI dubbing may help Hollywood with some more pressing problems in the short term. The pandemic forced streaming services to limit dubbing for a number of markets. For instance, Netflix has been telling viewers in recent months that it had to delay localization for some of its titles. "We're prioritizing voice actors' and dubbing studio safety," the company informed viewers within its app. Artificial intelligence could help to bridge those gaps, even if studios ultimately decide to rely on real voice actors for the final version.
A version of this story previously appeared on Protocol.
I mentioned Lucas Rizzotto's amazing exploits here before, but his latest YouTube video is definitely worth watching as well: To re-create the magic of Harry Potter's Marauder's Map, Rizzotto rented a small castle in Northern England (Tiny Hogwarts, as he called it), mapped the grounds with a drone and developed an AR app capable of overlaying his friends' real-time locations atop a piece of parchment. I love this project for a number of reasons, including that it's using technology that is readily available to everyone. Go check it out, and please follow Rizzotto on YouTube. He's up to no good in the best kinds of ways.
The lockdowns this year have transformed our homes into offices, schools, concert halls, movie theaters and gyms. Our homes are working harder for us, but so is our technology. The device that is working the hardest is perhaps the TV—becoming our lifeline to a far more virtual world.
Thanks for reading — see you next week!
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