15

15 is a software engineer and computer scientist. He is best known for creating the text-to-speech website 15.ai, which is credited with popularizing AI voice cloning, and his subsequent role in the Voiceverse NFT plagiarism scandal, in which an NFT company called Voiceverse plagiarized 15.ai in an attempt to market their partnership with voice actor Troy Baker. The pseudonym 15 is a reference to his claim that 15 seconds of speech is sufficient to clone a voice up to human standards, which was later corroborated by OpenAI.

Education and career

15 attended the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he received degrees in physics, computer science, and mathematics. His thesis was on quantum pseudo-telepathy in nonlocal game theory. As an undergraduate at MIT, he began developing voice AI technology, having been inspired by Google DeepMind's WaveNet paper. and drew attention from AI commentators such as Andrew Ng and Tyler Cowen.

In January 2022, 15 revealed on X that the blockchain company Voiceverse had plagiarized from 15.ai. Within an hour of being confronted, Voiceverse confessed and stated that their marketing team had used 15.ai without proper attribution while rushing to create a technology demo. In response, 15 replied "Go fuck yourself"; the interaction went viral and garnered a large amount of support for the developer.