Rachel Duffy was so good at tricking fellow contestants on The Traitors that she has inspired an AI alter ego which phones pubs to check the price of their pints.
A US engineer, who is a fan of the TV show, has used artificial intelligence to create a “voice agent” with a Northern Ireland accent, which he named ‘Rachel’.
On St Patrick’s Day weekend AI Rachel called more than 3,000 bars across the island of Ireland asking how much they charge for a Guinness.
Matt Cortland said the cost “varies wildly” from pub to pub and he wanted to create an online price comparison site to promote good value.
He explained he needed an AI voice agent which could interact naturally with pub staff and convince them to answer questions.
He specifically looked for a voice like Duffy’s because she sounds “so trustworthy”.
“We’re just finished watching the Traitors, she did such a spectacular job,” Cortland told BBC News NI.
“She convinced the whole castle, she convinced me.”
Duffy won the fourth series of the show, along with fellow traitor Stephen Libby, by fooling other competitors into believing they were faithful players.
Cortland did not use Duffy’s voice, but instead searched samples of other people’s voices which had been submitted to an AI lab.
He settled on a Northern Ireland accent as a “homage” to Duffy but also because the voice “sounded and worked correctly” within his AI project.
“It’s a variety of different factors, but broadly speaking it was modelled off of the concept of how good Rachel was in having chat and making people feel at ease.”
AI engineer Matt Cortland is originally from the US but said he “fell in love” when he first came to Ireland about 15 years ago. (Matt Cortland)
Where is the priciest pint?
As reported by TechEU, out of the 3,000+ pubs AI Rachel phoned, 2,052 answered and more than 1,000 told her the price of their Guinness.
Cortland collated the responses to create Guinndex – an online index where customers can track and report the price of pint in their local boozer.
