ElevenLabs, a voice AI research and product company, presented at MBZUAI's Incubation and Entrepreneurship Center (IEC) on the adoption of audio AI in the Middle East. Hussein Makki, general manager for the Middle East at ElevenLabs, highlighted the potential of voice-native AI across sectors like telecommunications, banking, and education. ElevenLabs focuses on making content accessible and engaging across languages and voices through its text-to-speech models. Why it matters: This signals growing interest and investment in voice AI applications within the region, potentially transforming customer service and content accessibility in Arabic.
MBZUAI students Muhammad Taimoor Haseeb and Ahmad Hammoudeh have created Audiomatic, an AI-driven platform that automates audio tasks for visual storytelling and addresses licensing challenges. The platform allows users to upload videos and automatically find suitable audio elements, streamlining the content creation process. The MBZUAI Incubation and Entrepreneurship Center (IEC) is providing support to help commercialize the platform. Why it matters: This platform has the potential to significantly impact the content creation industry in the region by simplifying audio production and mitigating licensing issues, while also highlighting MBZUAI's role in fostering AI innovation and entrepreneurship.
A talk at the Directed Energy Research Center (DERC) at TII will discuss rapid prototyping using laser-cutting facilities available at MakerSpace in Al Zeina. The talk will cover constructing prototypes from wood and acrylic and compare this approach to traditional 3D printing. The speakers will also describe the impact of the ‘4th Industrial Revolution’ on manufacturing in the UAE, and how makerspaces can contribute to Operation 300bn. Why it matters: This highlights the UAE's focus on advanced manufacturing and the role of makerspaces in fostering innovation and developing local capabilities.
A KAUST-led study published in Science found overwhelming evidence that man-made noise negatively impacts marine fauna and their ecosystems, disrupting behavior, physiology, and reproduction. The researchers assessed over 10,000 papers to demonstrate that noise pollution from shipping, fishing, and infrastructure development harms marine life from invertebrates to whales. They call for human-induced noise to be considered a prevalent stressor at the global scale and for policy to be developed to mitigate its effects. Why it matters: This research highlights the need to consider acoustic dimensions in ocean health restoration efforts, promoting management actions to reduce noise levels and allow marine animals to re-establish their use of ocean sound.
A research talk was given on privacy and security issues in speech processing, highlighting the unique privacy challenges due to the biometric information embedded in speech. The talk covered the legal landscape, proposed solutions like cryptographic and hashing-based methods, and adversarial processing techniques. Dr. Bhiksha Raj from Carnegie Mellon University, an expert in speech and audio processing, delivered the talk. Why it matters: As speech-based interfaces become more prevalent in the Middle East, understanding and addressing the associated privacy risks is crucial for ethical AI development and deployment.
Qatar Computing Research Institute (QCRI) has developed NatiQ, an end-to-end text-to-speech (TTS) system for Arabic utilizing encoder-decoder architectures. The system employs Tacotron-based models and Transformer models to generate mel-spectrograms, which are then synthesized into waveforms using vocoders like WaveRNN, WaveGlow, and Parallel WaveGAN. Trained on in-house speech data featuring a neutral male voice (Hamza) and an expressive female voice (Amina), NatiQ achieves a Mean Opinion Score (MOS) of 4.21 and 4.40, respectively. Why it matters: This research advances Arabic language technology, providing high-quality TTS synthesis that can enhance accessibility and usability of digital content for Arabic speakers.
A new paper from MBZUAI demonstrates that state-of-the-art speech models can be easily jailbroken using audio perturbations to generate harmful content, achieving success rates of 76-93% on models like Qwen2-Audio and LLaMA-Omni. The researchers adapted projected gradient descent (PGD) to the audio domain to optimize waveforms that push the model towards harmful responses. They propose a defense mechanism based on post-hoc activation patching that hardens models at inference time without retraining. Why it matters: This research highlights a critical vulnerability in speech-based LLMs and offers a practical solution, contributing to the development of more secure and trustworthy AI systems in the region and globally.
MBZUAI and startAD jointly launched an entrepreneurship program to boost the AI startup ecosystem in Abu Dhabi. The program culminated in startup pitches, with top ideas including Audiomatic for AI-assisted audio production, Limb for accessible physiotherapy information, and Momzo, a generative AI assistant for maternity and motherhood. The 22 graduates, representing over 10 nationalities, completed intensive courses covering idea generation, prototyping, and pitching. Why it matters: This initiative underscores the UAE's commitment to fostering AI innovation and entrepreneurship, aiming to translate research into impactful businesses and contribute significantly to the nation's knowledge economy.