AI is making it possible to clone voices

livemint.com:

artificial intelligence in June. The dangers that voice-cloning technology pose are only now starting to be uttered aloud. In recent months, most of the attention paid to artificial intelligence (AI) has gone to so-called “large-language models" like ChatGPT, which churn out text.

But voice cloning’s implications will also be profound. A brief sample of a voice can be used to train an AI model, which can then speak any given text sounding like that person. Apple is expected to include the feature for iPhones in its new operating system, iOS 17, due to be released in September.

It is advertised as helping people who may be in danger of losing their voice, for example to a degenerative disease such as ALS . For those eager to try voice cloning now, ElevenLabs, an AI startup, offers users the chance to create their own clones in minutes. The results are disturbingly accurate.

When generating a playback, the system offers a slider that allows users to choose between variability and stability. Select more variability, and the audio will have a lifelike intonation, including pauses and stumbles like “er…" Choose “stability", and it will come across more like a calm and dispassionate newsreader. Taylor Jones, a linguist and consultant, took a careful look at the quality of ElevenLabs’s clone of his voice in a YouTube video.

Using statistical tests he showed that there were a few things off in “his" pronunciation of certain vowels. But a lower-tech test, a “conversation" with his own mother, fooled the woman who raised him. (“Don’t you ever do that again," she warned.) Johnson repeated the experiment with his own mother, who did not miss a beat in replying to clone-Johnson.