X AMBASSADORS - ADRENALINE
voice-powered audio/video experience
UX, Microsoft AI, desktop & mobile
“Adrenaline” is a new single off the latest X Ambassadors album, The Beautiful Liar. The track is about listening to the inner voice we tend to hold back—and experiencing what it feels like to finally let go. X Ambassadors launched the song with the idea of bringing that inner voice to life.
The voice-inside-your-head, “The Shadow”, grew out of the album’s storytelling, and the band wanted to talk to fans about The Beautiful Liar’s backstory.
Working closely with Microsoft engineers, lead-singer Sam Harris created a Custom Neural Voice—a highly accurate AI-powered voice model that’s a synthetic recreation of his human voice. Sam assumed the role of his character, “The Shadow,” and recorded hundreds of lines of dialogue in his home studio. Those recordings were then uploaded to the Microsoft Azure Speech Studio to train the AI, crafting a voice that could read back any text as if it was the voice inside Sam’s head.
The result is a web-based interactive experience for “Adrenaline.” When you first arrive at the experience, it feels like watching a run-of-the-mill lyric video. But it’s suddenly interrupted by a playfully mysterious voice that says it has something to tell you about the song. You respond to The Shadow’s questions naturally, and the voice banters back.
Interactive moments are scattered across the song, while the particular path through the conversation is determined by the listener’s responses. The Shadow cuts in to share behind-the-scenes videos, anecdotes, and commentary on the song’s key themes and references.
The voice-inside-your-head, “The Shadow”, grew out of the album’s storytelling, and the band wanted to talk to fans about The Beautiful Liar’s backstory.
Working closely with Microsoft engineers, lead-singer Sam Harris created a Custom Neural Voice—a highly accurate AI-powered voice model that’s a synthetic recreation of his human voice. Sam assumed the role of his character, “The Shadow,” and recorded hundreds of lines of dialogue in his home studio. Those recordings were then uploaded to the Microsoft Azure Speech Studio to train the AI, crafting a voice that could read back any text as if it was the voice inside Sam’s head.
The result is a web-based interactive experience for “Adrenaline.” When you first arrive at the experience, it feels like watching a run-of-the-mill lyric video. But it’s suddenly interrupted by a playfully mysterious voice that says it has something to tell you about the song. You respond to The Shadow’s questions naturally, and the voice banters back.
Interactive moments are scattered across the song, while the particular path through the conversation is determined by the listener’s responses. The Shadow cuts in to share behind-the-scenes videos, anecdotes, and commentary on the song’s key themes and references.
