A new algorithm can mimic your voice with just snippets of audio
Baidu has a new neural-network-powered system that is amazingly good at cloning voices.
Mic check: To re-create a voice, AI typically needs to listen to hours of recordings of someone talking. But as New Scientist reports, a new process could get that down to one minute. Baidu researchers have unveiled an upgraded version of Deep Voice, their text-to speech synthesis system, that can now, once trained, clone any voice after listening to a few snippets of audio.
Details: The more samples Deep Voice hears, the better the results, but just 10 samples of less than five seconds each were enough for it to produce a synthetic voice that could fool a voice-recognition system more than 95 percent of the time. Baidu hosted some of the voice-cloning samples here for anyone to take a listen.
Of course there’s a downside: Technology like this could seriously undermine biometric security that uses someone’s voice as a security feature. People are already falling for e-mails “from” their friends—so what happens when it sounds like your mom calling and asking to borrow some money?
Deep Dive
Artificial intelligence
This new data poisoning tool lets artists fight back against generative AI
The tool, called Nightshade, messes up training data in ways that could cause serious damage to image-generating AI models.
Rogue superintelligence and merging with machines: Inside the mind of OpenAI’s chief scientist
An exclusive conversation with Ilya Sutskever on his fears for the future of AI and why they’ve made him change the focus of his life’s work.
Driving companywide efficiencies with AI
Advanced AI and ML capabilities revolutionize how administrative and operations tasks are done.
Unpacking the hype around OpenAI’s rumored new Q* model
If OpenAI's new model can solve grade-school math, it could pave the way for more powerful systems.
Stay connected
Get the latest updates from
MIT Technology Review
Discover special offers, top stories, upcoming events, and more.