Chapter 188 - Chapter 188: Chapter 188: A Lifetime of Glory (2 -in-I Big Chapter) (1/2)

Chapter 188: Chapter 188: A Lifetime of Glory (2 -in-I Big Chapter)

Translator: 549690339

Sitting in his computer chair, Xiang Kun stared blankly at the discussions about “the three Baldies” on the screen, feeling utterly dejected.

He thought that his ostentatious cooking video would be soon forgotten by netizens, but then a bunch of mischievous dubbed versions emerged.

He thought these dubbed versions would quickly bore netizens who would then move on to new materials, but then they linked his previous “back view photo” and “heroism video”.

He didn’t need to read those comments or search the related topics to know what the discussions would be like.

It looked like the popularity was not going to die down anytime soon.

Luckily, he has changed quite a bit these past few months, having gone bald, so his old classmates and acquaintances generally couldn’t recognize him—even his own mother couldn’t. It would be a tall order for others.

Only very few people could discern his true identity from these photos and videos.

Otherwise, his true identity would have been dug out by now.

What now?

Well, just let it slide. After all, he had no intention of stealing the limelight.

However, a quick calculation in his mind made him come up with an idea that he thought might work. He would discuss it with You Meng come daybreak.

Xiang Kun remembered his Al assistant project. He opened an input interface that looked like a simple text editor. The only difference was that there were a few simple keys at the bottom of the text input interface. The interface had virtually no UI design to speak of. Xiang Kun entered a line of text: “Hello everyone, I’m Tang Xiaona.”

Then he hit the play button below.

Then, Tang Baona’s voice spoke the next sentence. The voice was gentle and the tone was flat, but it sounded quite natural and smooth. At first listen, there would be no sense of incongruity, let alone the idea that the words weren’t spoken by a real person.

But with Xiang Kun’s ears, he still found a lot of problems.

Although he had already built the entire framework of his “Al assistant” plan quite early – including confirming the system architecture, data structure, key algorithms, and module functions – he was still unsatisfied with what he had done with the project.

The main cores were still existing, mature schemes. All he was doing was better integration and modification.

Nevermind whether the finished product could meet his needs, just the process of implementation would require a considerable amount of time and other costs. It wasn’t something he could accomplish immediately on his own.

Moreover, after several months of strange evolution, Xiang Kun suddenly felt that his “Al assistant,” which required so much time and cost to create, should not just be “good enough.”

On the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival, Xiang Kun had asked Tang Baona to provide voice samples for him, which she had agreed to. The sample collection was completed quite early. He had made targeted modifications to an existing open-source voice synthesis model and, after training, it successfully imitated Tang Baona’s voice.

Although he had been working on it sporadically, after more than a month, it was basically completed.

However, Xiang Kun was a bit dissatisfied with the outcome. Although the overall fluency in text reading, understanding of the context, lexical analysis, syntax analysis, and pragmatics had greatly improved compared with the original voice synthesis model…

In the big picture, it hadn’t really surpassed the current top-level standards. Whether abroad or domestically, text-reading voice synthesis Als were already doing a superb job. Some of the bottlenecks they faced, his creation also had not broken through.

That’s why Xiang Kun felt that his “Al assistant plan” was indeed a dilemma – it was tasteless, but it was a pity to discard it.

Boredly staring at the input box, Xiang Kun suddenly entered a sentence: “Xiang Kun, you’re so handsome.”

He then unchecked the option “Automatically adjust tone according to context” and chose “Gentle” from the specific tone options.

“Xiang Kun, you’re so handsome–”

Hearing Tang Baona’s voice softly and slowly saying this sentence, Xiang Kun couldn’t help but get goosebumps. He felt a little embarrassed. He thought for a moment, then changed the tone to “Angry”:

“Xiang Kun! You’re so handsome!”

Although the tone was heavy and sounded full of rage, Xiang Kun laughed because he imagined what Tang Baona would be like saying this. The

“gentleness” and the “anger” were tones he rarely heard from the real Tang Baona.

There were six specific tone options in total. After trying out each one, Xiang Kun suddenly felt that he had chosen a bit of an indecent sentence to test it.

Frustrated, he closed the window, changed his clothes, and went for a run up the hill. By now, he had already carved several paths up that small mountain.

When he came back from the “exercise”, it was already broad daylight. Although he didn’t sweat much, he had gathered a lot of dirt from running up the hill and needed a shower.

Back at his computer, seeing that the time was about right, Xiang Kun called You Meng. He knew that You Meng got up early every morning since he had to prepare food for his restaurant.

“Are you up yet? What are you doing, buying groceries?” As soon as the call connected, Xiang Kun asked.

“Up. The shop’s temporarily closed, so no grocery shopping. Why are you calling so early? Did you watch the video my wife shot for me? We filmed it according to your script.” You Meng asked curiously.

“Yeah, I saw it. We’ll talk about that later. You haven’t renovated your kitchen yet, have you?” Xiang Kun asked.

“Not yet. Director Liu said that after listening to my plan to only do rabbit meat, he could help see if we could change to a better location for a lower price. Anyway, the business in the whole commercial street is not good now, and prices are low, so we don’t need to invest money in renovation here.”

“Still, try to keep this shop, especially the kitchen. Also, don’t bother renovating the kitchen for now.”

You Meng was confused: “Didn’t you say to create some…persona or something, that it doesn’t matter about other places, but the kitchen should be clean and bright?”

“There’s been a change in plans. I’m going to let you ride a wave of popularity. Well, it’s not exactly riding; it’s our own popularity.”

The idea that Xiang Kun came up with last night was for You Meng to shoot a new video using the same kitchen as a backdrop.

They didn’t explicitly promote the relationship between You Meng and the bald guy’s cooking video either. Simply putting up You Meng’s cooking video, the idle and silly netizens, incapable of finding Xiang Kun’s real identity, would surely notice that the background of You Meng’s video is the same as that of Xiang Kun’s video, and then concentrate their attention on it — Xiang Kun didn’t believe that these silly netizens, who could even compare the back of his three bald heads, wouldn’t notice the clearly identical kitchen backgrounds.