15 (software engineer)

15 is an American software engineer, computer scientist, and mathematician. He is best known for creating 15.ai, a text-to-speech website credited with popularizing AI voice cloning. The pseudonym 15 is a reference to his claim that 15 seconds of speech is sufficient to clone a voice up to human standards, which was corroborated by OpenAI in 2024. 15 graduated from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where he began developing the technology behind 15.ai as a freshman. The site launched in 2020 and went viral the following year, becoming one of the first mainstream applications of generative AI and the first of audio deepfake technology. In 2022, he exposed the NFT company Voiceverse for plagiarizing 15.ai to promote its partnership with voice actor Troy Baker. An active member of the brony community, 15 has supported and founded various fandom-related projects.