Saw a live demo of AI voice cloning at a conference in Austin and it freaked me out

Was at SXSW last week and watched someone clone a stranger's voice from a 30 second clip then make it say things they never said. The crowd laughed but I sat there thinking about how easy this would be to abuse. How are we supposed to trust any audio recording going forward?

2 comments

2 Comments

robin_wright17d ago

The demo part is definitely creepy, I won't argue that. But I actually see this technology as a net positive if we're smart about it. We already had deepfakes and photoshopped images, this is just the next thing we need to adapt to. Voice cloning could help people who lost their voices to illness, or allow creators to work faster without hiring voice actors for every little thing. The real issue isn't the tech itself, it's that we haven't built the right verification systems yet. Blockchain or digital watermarks could authenticate real recordings, just like we already use them to verify identity documents. Getting scared and rejecting it outright would be like banning cameras because someone took an unflattering photo.

taylor8217d ago

...and I think that's the wrong way to look at it honestly. The comparison to photoshopped images doesn't hold up because you can at least look at a photo from different angles or ask someone who was there. With audio, if your mom calls you crying and says she's in trouble, you're not gonna stop and check a blockchain watermark. You're gonna panic and send money. This tech takes away the one thing we had left that felt real which was hearing someone's actual voice. We're not ready for that and pretending we can just watermark our way out of it is wishful thinking at best.