A Lifetime's Reputation (Double Chapter)

Looking at the discussion about the three bald men's connection on the computer screen, Xiang Kun leaned back in his computer chair, looking utterly hopeless.

I thought his pretentious cooking videos would soon be forgotten by netizens, but unexpectedly, a bunch of parody dubbing videos have emerged.

I thought netizens would get tired of this kind of parody dubbing soon and look for new material, but unexpectedly, they've linked his previous "back view picture" and "heroic act video" together again.

He didn't need to read the comments or search for related content to know what the discussion would be like.

It seems this hype isn't going to die down anytime soon.

Fortunately, he has changed a lot in the past few months and is now bald, so his former classmates and acquaintances generally don't recognize him—not even his own mother. You can imagine how difficult it would be for others to recognize him.

Only a handful of people could discern his true identity from these pictures and videos.

Otherwise, his true identity would probably have been exposed long ago.

What should we do now?

Forget it, let's just let it go. He's not going to actively step forward to quell this controversy anyway.

However, after a quick mental calculation, Xiang Kun had an idea that he thought might be useful. He would discuss it with You Meng after dawn.

Xiang Kun then thought of his AI Assistant Plan. He opened an input interface that looked like a simple text editor, except that there were a few simple buttons at the bottom of the text input interface, and the entire interface had virtually no UI design.

Xiang Kun typed a line of text into the text box. "Hello everyone, I am Tang Xiaona."

Then I pressed the play button below.

The next sentence was spoken in Tang Baona's voice. Her voice was soft and her tone was calm, but her pronunciation sounded very natural and smooth. At first glance, there was no sense of incongruity, and no one would think that it was not spoken by a real person.

However, even with Xiang Kun's keen ears, he still detected many problems.

Although his "AI assistant" project had already established its overall framework a long time ago, basically determining its system architecture, data structure, key algorithms, and module functions.

However, the only part that has actually been implemented is the speech synthesis function, because Xiang Kun is still not satisfied with his "AI assistant" plan.

Its core remains the existing, mature solutions; it simply integrates and modifies them for better results.

Leaving aside whether the finished product's functions will meet his needs, the implementation process alone will require a significant amount of time and other costs, which cannot be accomplished by him alone in a short period of time.

Now, after several months of mutation and evolution, Xiang Kun inexplicably feels that the "AI assistant" he spent so much time and money to create should not be "just like this".

So he's only ever done the facade work of an "AI assistant"—generating voices.

On the night of the Mid-Autumn Festival, Xiang Kun asked Tang Baona to provide him with voice samples, and she agreed. The sample collection had been completed long ago, and he had made targeted modifications to an existing open-source speech synthesis model. After training, it successfully imitated Tang Baona's voice.

Although I've been working on it on and off for a while, it's basically finished after more than a month.

However, Xiang Kun was still somewhat dissatisfied with the result, although the overall fluency of text reading, understanding of context, lexical analysis, syntactic analysis, and pragmatic analysis were all significantly improved compared to the original speech synthesis model.

Overall, however, it hasn't truly surpassed the current top level. Whether abroad or domestically, AI that synthesizes speech based on reading text has already done quite well. And the bottlenecks they face, Xiang Kun's work still hasn't broken through.

Therefore, Xiang Kun now feels somewhat "uninteresting but also reluctant to abandon" regarding his "AI Assistant Plan."

Somewhat bored, Xiang Kun stared at the input box and suddenly typed in a sentence: "Xiang Kun, you're so handsome."

Then I unchecked "Automatically change tone according to context" and selected "gentle" in the specific tone options.

"Xiang Kun, you're so handsome~~"

Hearing Tang Baona speak these words in a soft and gentle voice, Xiang Kun couldn't help but get goosebumps and felt a little embarrassed.

After thinking for a moment, I chose "angry" as the tone:

"Xiang Kun! You're so handsome!"

Although the tone was harsh and sounded full of anger, Xiang Kun found it amusing because he imagined Tang Baona's appearance and found it strangely endearing. Whether it was the former gentle tone or the latter angry one, it was a tone he rarely heard from the real Tang Baona.

There are six specific tones in total. After trying them all, Xiang Kun suddenly felt that his choice of this sentence to read was a bit sleazy.

After closing the window listlessly, Xiang Kun changed his clothes and went out to hike in the mountains to get some exercise. He had already carved several paths through that small mountain.

When I came back from my "exercise," it was already broad daylight. Although I didn't sweat much, I still got quite a bit of mud on my feet while hiking, so I still needed to take a shower to clean myself up.

Sitting back down at the computer, Xiang Kun saw that it was almost time and dialed You Meng's number. He knew that since opening the shop, You Meng had been getting up very early every morning because he had to prepare ingredients every day.

"Are you up yet? What are you doing? Buying groceries?" Xiang Kun asked as soon as the call connected.

"You're up? The shop is closing temporarily, so I didn't go grocery shopping. Why are you calling so early? By the way, have you seen the video my wife filmed for me before? It was filmed according to the script you gave me," You Meng asked, somewhat puzzled.

"Yeah, I've seen it. We'll talk about that later. Your kitchen isn't renovated yet, is it?" Xiang Kun asked.

"Not yet. After Director Liu heard about my plan to specialize in rabbit meat, he said I could contact him and see if I could get a better location at a lower price. Anyway, business is bad for all the shops on the commercial street right now, and prices are low. As for this place, there's no need to invest any more money in renovations."

"Let's try to keep this shop, especially the kitchen. And let's not renovate the kitchen for now."

You Meng curiously, "Didn't you say before that you wanted to create that... persona, that other things didn't matter, but the kitchen absolutely had to be clean and bright?"

"Things have changed now, and I'm planning to let you ride the wave of popularity. Well, not exactly riding it, since it's already our own popularity."

Xiang Kun's idea last night was to have You Meng film a video, also set in that kitchen.

They didn't deliberately promote the connection between You Meng and the previous bald guy's cooking video; they simply posted You Meng's cooking video. They figured that once the bored, clueless netizens couldn't find Xiang Kun's true identity, someone would inevitably notice that the background of You Meng's video was the same as Xiang Kun's, and then focus their attention on it— Xiang Kun didn't believe that these clueless netizens, who could even compare the backs of his three bald heads, wouldn't notice such an obvious kitchen background!

Once netizens notice, they will naturally feel excited about uncovering the truth, and then the traffic and popularity will naturally follow. They will then try to "tell the story". Throughout this process, Xiang Kun will never appear, and his identity will always remain a mystery. The more mysterious he is, the greater the netizens' curiosity will be, and the more they will focus on the known clue of "Youlong Restaurant".

Once you've brought customers from the internet to your restaurant and they start coming in to try your dishes, you've achieved your goal.

Ultimately, they still need to rely on the taste of the food to keep customers coming back.

Of course, You Meng's cooking videos also need to be of a certain quality; the one he sent to Xiang Kun last night is definitely not acceptable.

After chatting for a while, Xiang Kun told You Meng not to change locations yet, but to at most ask if there were any shops next to his that were available for subletting, and then prepared to end the call.

"Oh, right, there's something I need to tell you." You Meng suddenly remembered something and said, "The breeding farm we visited in Chongyun Village has been taken over by someone else."

"Oh, well, there's nothing I can do then. I'll find another place." Xiang Kun didn't seem to care much. He had actually planned to give up on that spot anyway, but he could keenly sense that You Meng's voice held a hint of anticipation, as if he hadn't finished speaking.

Sure enough, You Meng chuckled twice and said, "Guess who took over?"

Xiang Kun's heart skipped a beat, and he immediately said, "Could it be Director Liu Caifu?"

"Huh? How did you know?" This time, You Meng was stunned.

Xiang Kun looked up at the ceiling and sighed silently. How else could he know that the only person he could possibly take over the Chongyun Village site, besides Liu Caifu, the deputy director of Chongyun Village, was...?

"What did he want to do with that land?" Xiang Kun asked, though he already had a vague idea of the answer.

"You can ask him yourself next time you come. He originally wanted to call you, but I told him you were very busy and it would be better to talk face-to-face when you come to Tongshi Town. Actually, it's quite simple. Director Liu still wants to invite you to Chongyun Village. He still remembers the blueprint you drew up before."

Xiang Kun was helpless. He had dug his own hole and created his own mess; he had no choice but to admit it.

We can only wait until we go back to Tongshi Town to see if we can "reassur" Director Liu and help him lower his expectations.

After ending his call with You Meng, Xiang Kun checked the time and contacted Tang Baona, who should be on her way to work.

After sending the video shooting script he had prepared for the "Youlong Restaurant" to Tang Baona and briefly explaining his intentions, Tang Baona replied a few minutes later:

"Your shooting script is really well written. I think it will be a lot of fun to film."

Xiang Kun then sent them the finished video that You Meng and his wife had filmed.

A dozen minutes later, Tang Baona sent a picture of an old man on the subway squinting at his phone, along with a string of "...".

Xiang Kun sent a shrug emoji. "So how should we adjust?"

"Actually, it's normal for it to turn out like this. According to your script, you still have to strictly follow the storyboard, shoot one shot at a time, and then make adjustments. Shooting in one continuous take is too demanding on the 'lead actor's' acting skills. Your friend is nowhere near as thick-skinned as you!" Tang Baona sent a laughing emoji.

After discussing for a while, Tang Baona expressed her willingness to help, but she wasn't very professional and had learned a lot on her own. She could only offer some suggestions on filming, but she could help with editing, which shouldn't be any worse than what a typical studio would do.

Xiang Kun naturally expressed her gratitude, and then casually asked what her grandfather thought of the Canary Wooden Carving from last time.

"Actually, I originally wanted to keep it for myself. 'Gold Glitter' would be a perfect match as a pet next to Saber. But after I sent a picture to my grandpa, he called again to take it. This time, my grandpa said he would keep it safe and not let my second uncle see it, so he wouldn't cause any more trouble."

The "Gold Glitter" wooden carving wasn't "Emotional Injection," it was just "Super-Sensory Link," so naturally there won't be any more problems. If the old man has nightmares again, then it's really not his fault.

Tang Baona sent another message: "By the way, didn't you ask me to record a lot of voice recordings to make some kind of AI voice? How's it going?"

"It's finished. I'll send it to you when you get home. Currently, it's only available for Windows 10; it hasn't been ported to Android and iOS yet. Uh, it probably won't be for the time being. Right now, it can only read text. You can use it to listen to books, with your own voice reading to you—that'll be quite a unique experience!"

After a while, Tang Baona said again, "Send it via QQ. I'll be at the company, so I can send it directly to you. I can play on my computer then."

"Good."

After replying, Xiang Kun sent the packaged software directly to him.

But after the file transfer was complete, Xiang Kun's eyes widened and his mouth formed an "O" shape. He suddenly remembered that after using the software last night, he had exited without deleting the text in the text box. And, annoyingly, he had enabled an auto-save function for the input box; if he didn't clear it, the text would still be there the next time he opened the software...

I wanted to cancel immediately, but it was too late; the files had already been transferred.

"I just discovered that the version I sent you seems to have a problem, don't run it yet..." Xiang Kun could finish typing, Tang Baona had already sent a message:

"..."

Although there were only six dots and not a single word, Xiang Kun already knew she had seen it.

However, he didn't know how to reply, so he could only reply with, "..."

A few minutes later, Tang Baona sent a panda emoji with a black face. "I just opened it and didn't even notice what the text said before I clicked play, and guess what sound came out of the speaker."

Xiang Kun sent a sad emoji with two fingers pointing at each other.

Tang Baona then posted a laughing-crying emoji, "Sister Chen, who was sitting not far from me, asked me in surprise: 'Nana, are you also a fan of celebrities? Who is this Xiang Kun? He's very handsome!'"

Xiang Kun was speechless and continued to respond with an expression of covering his face and crying.

Tang Baona sent a Bao Zheng emoji. "So, you wanted my voice as material because you were doing these kinds of shady things behind the scenes?"

Xiang Kun pinched his face hard. His lifelong reputation was ruined!

This is a mess, there's no way to clear my name now!

Thanks to the new helmsman "Tai`Yi", and thanks to the following book friends for their donations: Book Friend 20170819133739475, Book Friend 20190920212303425, taiyinyin, Eagle Soaring Marquis, Book Friend 20190127194007939, From Heart 0303, Huiming Locked Silent, Little Lice on Zhang Ya's Hair, Qidian Reading iOS, Huiming Locked Silent, Cloud Deep Unknown Search, Rotten Flesh Chariot, Qidian Reading iOS, Nia Not at Home, Half a Jin, Eight Liang, idateyou, Ship Girl Chef, Two Hearts Too, Hell Mingshi, Not All Milk is Called Soy Milk, Death Flame Messenger is High-Value, Qidian Reading iOS.