What does voice cloning mean?
Voice cloning makes a digital clone of a person’s distinctive voice, such as speech patterns, accents, voice quality, and breathing, via teaching an algorithm with a three-second audio sample of that person’s speech.
Voice cloning is a new type of AI that precisely replicates human speech, rendering the distinction between actual speech and AI-generated speech nearly difficult. By training an algorithm with a sample of speech, this activity creates a digital duplicate of a person’s distinctive voice. After a voice model is established, plain text is used to synthesise speech, capturing and reproducing an individual’s precise sound. Unlike the artificial, unnatural, and robotic-sounding synthetic speech of the past, cloned voices may represent emotions such as wrath, fear, love, and boredom.
Is Voice Cloning a Powerful Tool?
For now, artificial intelligence-powered voice cloning is seen to be an exciting new technology with a chance to improve people’s lives. There is a significant benefit to its usage in entertainment, as voice-over artists will be able to accomplish much more. For example, if an artist is overbooked, they can still get paid if they merely send a sample of their voice for one of the jobs so that it can be replicated.
Vocal cloning can additionally be used to translate an actor’s words into multiple languages, which means that film production firms will no longer need to engage foreign-language performers to generate versions of their films suited for other countries.
Probably the greatest potential for benefit is in the medical field, where those with speech difficulties can be helped. Consider the possibility of creating artificial voices for people who are unable to communicate without assistance. Assume a patient with throat cancer who has their larynx removed but can record their voice before surgery to generate a cloned voice that sounds more like their former self.
How Voice Cloning Encourages Scams
AI voice generators may be used to imitate not just celebrities and people in positions of power but also ordinary people. Vishing (voice phishing) assaults take place when cybercriminals mimic ordinary individuals. Older individuals are frequently targeted in these sorts of scams, and in some cases, they run to the bank to withdraw money for a loved one who allegedly just phoned in despair, only to discover it was an AI-generated fraud that reproduced the loved one’s voice without their permission.
Several different sorts of voice cloning firms are emerging these days, and as this technology becomes more common and accessible, some abuses and misuses are bound to happen.
What are the security measures to be taken while implementing voice cloning?
1. Methods Regarding Opt-In and Out
Airport security lines demand visitors show their license and boarding permit, and face recognition is frequently used to match the individual in the license photo. Clear labelling describes the collection, use, and storage of biometric data, along with other consent processes. The same opt-in/opt-out permission processes that exist for face recognition must be accessible for voice recording, allowing people to keep control over their different biological identities.
2. A system of multi-factor authentication
When a user enters a primary password or some other form of verification, a code is transmitted to the user’s device; these devices are mostly mobile phones. While it could complicate user authentication and allow text interceptions, it can give a second degree of verification for organizations that employ voice recognition as a biometric authentication method.
3. Liveness Detection
Organizations that use voice recognition can use liveness detection, a method similar to face recognition, to combat duplicate attacks. With great accuracy, liveness detection may detect playback spoofing attempts using a variety of techniques, such as intrasession voice fluctuation. The system records a user’s statement as an audio sample, asks them to repeat a random portion of it, and then compares the results to calculate a liveness detection score. Similar to multi-factor authentication, this strategy can assist companies in defending their systems against spoofing assaults.
Conclusion
Vocal cloning has the potential to advance healthcare, but it also comes with ethical dilemmas, legal difficulties, and fraud dangers. Businesses that use speech recognition should take extra precautions to protect themselves. While making and sharing movies on social media, people should take precautions and take responsibility because their private biometric information could be exposed.
