"Scout, why the fuck do you exist?!"
— One of many lines
that you can get Demoman from Team Fortress 2 to say.
that you can get Demoman from Team Fortress 2 to say.15.ai is a freeware artificial intelligence web application that generates natural emotive high-quality text-to-speech voices from an assortment of fictional characters from a variety of media sources. Developed anonymously by one developer, who goes under the pseudonym 15, the project uses a combination of audio synthesis algorithms, speech synthesis deep neural networks, and sentiment analysis models to generate and serve emotive character voices faster than real-time, even those with a very small amount of data.
To put it simply, it can be used to synthesize the voices of various pop culture characters with shockingly good accuracy and with just about any line a user can put in.
It began development while the developer was a college undergraduate and was initially released to the public on March 6th, 2020, with updates currently ongoing and more characters planned to be added. The website has since gone dormant, however, with the latest status from the developer in February 2023 stating that he's continuously working on a major update.
There are fifteen works present on the site so far, with a varying number of characters available for use:
Current Works
- Portal note
- My Little Pony: Friendship Is Magic note
- SpongeBob SquarePants note
- HuniePop note
- Daria note
- Aqua Teen Hunger Force note
- Team Fortress 2 note
- Persona 4 note
- Steven Universe note
- Dan Vs. note
- 2001: A Space Odyssey note
- The Stanley Parable note
- Doctor Who note
- Undertale and Deltarune note
It can be found here and can be used by anyone, with the only rules being to credit the software and to not mix it with other TTS software.
Across many videos:
- Adaptation Relationship Overhaul: GLaDOS's and Wheatley's relationship has largely changed from enemies to more like bickering roommates.
- Adapted Out: An inevitability considering that some characters either don't, or can't, have a voice on the site. A good example of this is the Pyro from Team Fortress 2 since their voice is muffled considerably, leading to them not having a role in videos and being referred to off-screen at best. Although a few videos do make an effort to include the Pyro, they have to rely on the muffled voice lines from the game instead.
- Butt-Monkey: While it varies between videos, Scout gets the brunt of this in TF2-centric videos, often being the one Demoman yells at for doing something he doesn't like, or being insulted by the team for any reason.
- Cover Version: It's common to have characters dub over or read from famous quotes and memes from TV shows, movies, and books.
- Depending on the Writer: If we listed every character that's different in some way, we'd be here all day. Some of the more popular examples include:
- The "Demoman Finds (x)" videos. How Demoman treats his teammates is tossed around from video to video. Some portray him as in the right to call out his teammates over their fetishes while others have him be in the wrong for violating their privacy, even showing him to have a fetish just like them. A couple try to have a middle ground, with Demoman being relatively fine with what they get up to...only to find something else that he thinks is genuinely worth putting them on blast over. Some videos have only certain mercenaries with fetishes (Scout is generally an acceptable target), and others have every mercenary with a fetish, much to Demoman's disgust.
- Massive Multiplayer Crossover: Definitely teetering into this territory; as of now, we have voices from TF2, MLP, Portal, Doctor Who, Persona 4, Daria, HuniePop, Stanley Parable, Undertale and Deltarune, and even unexpected additions like ATHF, Dan Vs. and friggin Space Odyssey. And it doesn't seem to have intentions on stopping there.
- Only Sane Man: Demoman frequently serves as this in many different videos.
- Out of Character: All over the place to varying extents. Demoman for example, who is polite and well-mannered towards pretty much everybody when he's sober, is often portrayed being immensely antagonistic and yelling at his team for a variety of reasons.
- Robo Speak: While the software does a pretty good job at synthesizing the characters voices, it isn't perfect with everything since the quality of a word or line varies depending on how it is typed. One example of this being laughter, where it can be an emotionless "ha ha ha," or a droning "haaaaaaaaaa."
- Significant Name Shift: GLaDOS and Wheatley call each other by name in many of their appearances; as a contrast to Portal 2, where they use nicknames like "she", "her", "idiot", and "moron".
In specific videos:
- Achievements in Ignorance: In "The Mercs Argue Over Their Favourite Rappers", when Demoman dares Soldier to say the N-word to prove how "American" he is, Soldier literally just says "The N Word!". When Demo protests, Soldier simply replies that he just said what Demoman told him to say.Demoman: ...Aye, fair enough.
- All Just a Dream: "The Mercs Argue Over Their Favorite Fast Food Restaurants" has Scout flip out and attack the team... only for Heavy to wake up screaming in his bed. He's relieved to find out it was all a nightmare, and hopes that he didn't wake his team up by accident.
- Butt-Monkey: Taken up to eleven when the RED team has to hire a new Scout. Each and every new Scout they hired either caused problems for the team and are complete degenerates in some way, resulting in them being swiftly killed. By the time the Administrator finally stopped trying, the mass grave had just under a thousand dead Scouts. In the same video, we see that the BLU team are having their own Scout problem.
- Chummy Commies: Combined with Dirty Communists, the Trotskyist BLU Heavy is this. He opposes the BLU Team falling apart like the RED Team did, and opposes the ultranationalist BLU Spy's and the black supremacist BLU Demoman's racism, but he calls the syndicalist BLU Sniper "counterrevolutionary" for opposing the Permanent Revolution, and voices his support for Vladimir Putin's invasion of Ukraine in order to restore the Soviet Union.
- Darker and Edgier: TF2 is a violent game, but it's always in a light-hearted, darkly comical, and over-the-top way. The comics turn into a whacked-out dramedy and gets surprisingly solemn at times, but never lost its humor throughout its run. In the Standin Incident series of videos, there's no comedy to be found, going straight into War Is Hell territory. The mercenaries are clones bred only for war by the RED and BLU armies, many of whom split to form their own factions (up to 10 if one showcase is to be believed). Anybody who betrays the RED team, assuming they aren't killed outright, get "refurbished" into mindless robots to serve their superiors. All of which are treated seriously.
- Deconstruction: "The Road to Salvation" series is a deconstruction of the typical 15.ai videos where Demoman finds out of Spy's fursona. Here, Demoman outs Spy for his fursona to the rest of the team and he proceeds to ostracize Spy with the help of Scout and Soldier, playing out like similar 15.ai videos... except Spy ends up pushed to his breaking point, where he ends up killing Demoman in a fit of rage, which sets off a series of tragic events that involves Soldier having a mental breakdown and the team becoming divided. There are even a few times where it's pointed out the only reason that the whole situation has happened is because Demoman chose to bully Spy over his interests.
- Disproportionate Retribution: In Scout and the team have anime night, Medic comes to Scout's house late, because he was busy murdering a pizza delivery man for being too slow at his job. And to rub salt in the wound, Medic pretty much stole the man's job while he was at it.Scout:"...That's fucked up."
- Early-Installment Weirdness: While the Political Debate videos aren't exactly lore-friendly to begin with, the first one did attempt to adhere to at least some of it, like RED Heavy's backstory. The two sequels threw that away entirely to the point where the disclaimer explicitly states that the lore doesn't apply, and the final debate video has the characters yell at Scout to shut up about the comics.
- Fanboy: Brought up in Scout and the team have anime night; Spy is a humongous fan of JoJo's Bizarre Adventure...Much to the ire of Heavy, who prefers Hitman Reborn! instead. Soldier also gets this treatment with Avatar: The Last Airbender, to a extent where he lost sleep thinking of not watching Avatar for at least 5 hours.
- Hypocritical Humor: In Spy STILL doesn't think Big Chungus is funny, after the rest of the team try and fail to convince Spy for the second time, they ask what he personally thinks is funny. It turns out to be Saturday Night Live. Cue explosion of arguments and a Big Chungus bomb bursting in and detonating a few seconds later.
- At the beginning of the riot in Blu Soldier jumps into a riot at a store, Dan has this to say:
Dan: I find it very amusing that these low-lifers will fight over the stupidest reasons.
(The fight passes by him.)
Dan: You son of a bitch! Did you guys just step on my shoes? You're fucking dead! - At the beginning of the riot in Blu Soldier jumps into a riot at a store
- Motive Rant: In The Standin Incident, Spy-6 comes across Scout-1 and Sniper-3 arguing about whether or not to kill the friendly BLU medic that they caught in their outpost. After some arguing, with Scout-1 wanting to kill the BLU medic and Sniper-3 wanting to spare him, Spy-6 goes on a rant and explains that he wants the glory he thinks he deserves. Sniper-3 and Scout-1 try to persuade Spy-6 to their sides afterwards, but what Spy ultimately does leads to separate paths.Spy-6: War is the only thing keeping me to-fucking-gether!
(Beat)
Spy-6: Do you know...what it's like...to be in the civilized world? Everybody is a goddamn moron, because Teufort won't fix their tap water. And that's not the worse of it...you are treated like garbage. Nobody gives a fuck about you on the streets. You'll find yourself outside of a job, homeless maybe! War is what makes me, me! I do not know of any other sane person wanting to go back to that shitty part of life, that is why I am always isolated, in the shadows...but it's not like any of you people would understand...
(Dramatic Gun Cock)
Spy-6: So, does it really matter if war is brought here? No! It does not matter, I don't care about your pacifism, Sniper, or your pay, Scout. Or even your morals, Medic. I care about one thing and one thing only. To be the one that makes history! To be the one that turns the tide of battle! To be a hero! That way, I can finally earn my place within the books! I will be respected again! And no one, not even the political elite, will humiliate me. Ever. Again. - Not-So-Omniscient Council of Bickering: The RED TEAM debate over ideologies at 4 AM is about the RED team yelling at each other over their ideological differences. The BLU team proves to be no better.
- One-Word Vocabulary: Neighsayer has the Mane Six repeatedly saying only one word each: "Darling" (Rarity), "Apples" (Applejack), "Books" (Twilight), "Party" (Pinkie), "Awesome" (Rainbow), and "F#@%" (Fluttershy).
- Pædo Hunt: Disturbed at Wheatley making mechanical clanking noises to Miss Kobayashi's Dragon Maid (as Kanna Kamui looks like a little girl), GLaDOS calls the FBI to have him arrested. But since the FBI doesn't exist anymore, GLaDOS sics a turret on Wheatley.
- Playing Against Type: In-Universe, while the Mane Six discuss Equestria at War, Rainbow Dash comments that most of her friends play as Supremacists and/or enemies of Equestria. When Celestia shows up, she reveals that she sides with Nightmare Moon in the Equestrian Civil War.
- Rage Breaking Point: The Mercs Argue Over Their Favorite Fast Food Restaurants has Scout, after spending all night having his preference for Burger King being dunked on, finally flip after Demoman threatens to get his mother pregnant and attack the others.
- "The Reason You Suck" Speech: After Soldier teleports himself back to base during the store riot to escape arrest and accidentally brings the other rioters with him, Spy snaps and brutally lays into him after Soldier demands respect as a patriotic American. He regrets it a few seconds later after his teammates call him out.Spy: Oh my god, Soldier, you're stupid as the RED Soldier! Because you were never part of the war! You were never in the U.S. Army, you were never an American soldier, Heavy was never a communist! The RED team are not commies either! […] So stop your bullshit lies, Soldier! I snuck into the Administrator's office to check your personal information. You have over 20 crimes for fighting in public, your reputation is damn awful, you're a fucking public nuisance to society. You never had a fucking real job until now because you kept doing shit like this, and now there's probably strangers here messing with our weapons since you teleported here with them! If you actually had 1% of a brain, your sorry ass wouldn't have dropped out of school and become a fucking degenerate, you useless sack of shit.
(Beat)
Soldier: Spy, I have never felt this disrespected. You know what, I'm quitting my job. Why did you have to do me like this?
Spy: You know why I did this. You can't even fucking speak your own native language properly. Now do the world a favor and die alone and depressed and get fucking HIV, you fucking wasted sperm. - Russian Guy Suffers Most: In the first two political debate videos, the Heavys talk about the Soviet Union. The Menshevik RED Heavy resents the USSR for what it did to him, to Russia, and to his family. The Trotskyist BLU Heavy, however, hated the fall of the USSR, and how much the Russians suffered during the 1990's.
- Take That!: "The Mercs Argue Over Their Favorite Fast Food Restaurants" has literally every other Merc (aside from Soldier and Pyro, who aren't there) dissing Scout for liking Burger King, citing the poor quality of their fries over and over.
- "The Mercs argue about their favorite Need for Speed games" has two of these towards particular Need for Speed games - Underground and the 2012 remake of Most Wanted.
- "The Mercs argue about their favorite Need for Speed games"
- The Scream: The first two political debate videos have this occur three times each. The final debate video has every RED and BLU member let out an incredibly loud one for two minutes straight until Miss Pauling intervenes.
- The Secret of Long Pork Pies: The "Pony Pies" series shows Applejack moving on from selling apples to selling "pony pies." Applejack doesn't hide that these pies are made of dead ponies. Derpy is the only one concerned about the contents of the pies, while everyone else thinks "ponies" is "a code name for the secret ingredient." And when Twilight realizes that she's been eating ponies, she decides to eat Fluttershy next.
- Serious Business: In Engineer's words, accusing someone of saying that Big Chungus isn't funny is very serious. Most of the team (except Spy) agree.
- Sir Swears Alot: Almost all characters (including Demoman himself) swear like friggin' sailors.
