LG Uplus announced on the 16th that they have used AI Text-To-Speech (TTS) technology to restore the voice of a firefighter who died in the line of duty and created a voice message for the firefighter’s parents. The message was played on a plane to Japan as part of a healing trip for the parents of 17 fallen firefighters, organized by the National Fire Agency from May 9th to 12th.
Among the participants were the parents of the late firefighter Kim Soo-kwang, who lost his life while battling a fire at a factory in Mungyeong, North Gyeongsang Province, last January. The voice letter was played during the flight.
LG Uplus initiated this project while discussing activities to support public safety personnel and their families. This year, LG Uplus has set a social contribution goal to utilize its various AI technologies to support the well-being of public safety workers and plans to continue collaborating with the National Fire Agency in various ways.
To restore firefighter Kim’s voice, LG Uplus used a zero-shot-based advanced TTS technology. Typically, creating a specific individual’s voice with AI requires learning from hundreds to thousands of recorded sentences. However, LG Uplus’s enhanced personalized TTS technology can analyze and learn unique pronunciations, intonations, tones, and speech patterns from just one or two sentences to recreate voice and inflection from inputted text.
Im Myeong-seop, head of ESG at LG Uplus, expressed hope that the fallen firefighters would be remembered with pride and that their families would find comfort. He stated LG Uplus will continue to strive towards creating a brighter world and realizing social value with AI technology.
The video containing firefighter Kim’s voice message can be viewed on the official SNS of the National Fire Agency.