Who wanted a future in which AI can copy your voice and say things you never uttered? Who?! Artificially intelligent software can listen to someone's voice only a few times, and then speak just like them, like some kind of creepy cybernetic myna bird... according to a paper published by researchers from Baidu. This technology, when perfected, will be ideal for generating fake audio clips of people saying things they …
How long until this mysteriously starts happening to enemies of the US?
I wouldn't be a bit surprised if it started happening years ago. Just like I'm fairly certain that at least a few intelligence organizations knew about Meltdown and were using it long before it came to public light.
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AI generated fake voice and fake video get lots of press coverage, but I do not see much in the press about AI generated hand writing. Spokesmen for Google and Facebook said much the same thing: no point - thanks to password re-use we already have the online banking passwords for half the western world.
I hunted down someone doing research into AI handwriting and after several pints, I got this snippet: "We do not make an effort to publicise out research because we are so well funded. We get a large number of small donations from people too lazy to check their bank statements."
almost all the use cases are creepy - the genie however is out of the bottle...
For same gender triplets, twins etc that ship sailed the day they were born. Theres already someone that looks & sounds like them, knows all their "secret" financial info - DOB, Moms maiden name etc.
"the genie however is out of the bottle"
celebrity impersonations already exist. I wonder if the tech could EVER compete...
There's that one Futurama episode when the prof's young clone built a voice impersonator using his father's voice - "Good news everyone! I'm a horse's butt" (episode 'The Route of All Evil' as far as I can tell)
And someone like Ferris Bueller could use this kind of tech to call in sick, and sound a lot more convincing.
All of the examples of Siri and Alexa that I've heard sound like robots (and vocaloids, too, unfortunately). Watson seems less so, but still 'robotish'. you can just "tell".
So I'd guess that impersonation tech may have the same kind of flaw for YEARS, maybe even DECADES, when "legit" tech can't even get it right. Genie out of the bottle? yeah, but he's a robot-sounding genie.
> "Your Honour must disregard
I received an email this evening from the local police warning of a spate of thefts of car number plates. The message goes on to say that criminals use these to escape speeding fines etc...
I bet this won't stop them insisting in court that the photo shows your registration number so you must be guilty.
The use-case mentioned about having an audiobook read with the same voice as a child's mother deserves to be filed under 'C' for 'Creepy'!
I can't really think of any use-cases which aren't either creepy or criminal. The criminal use-cases are fantastic though. How about I receive a voicemail or even a phone call from a friend asking me to transfer him some money? Video and audio evidence is going to be worthless.
We are going to have to introduce better technologies to prove someone is who they say they are, I suppose.
We are going to have to introduce better technologies to prove someone is who they say they are
Better technologies, like, you know, meet in person?
Another use of this voice cloing is that we start to develop better authentication and verification methods. Not only for interaction directly with a system but also for communication between meat sacks over systems. I sense the sweet smell of encryption all around*!
* also known as the control freak govemint's nightmare
I can't really think of any use-cases which aren't either creepy or criminal.
Sat navs. As well as choosing voice gender, it will become trivial (eventually) to choose the accent too.
Cortana/Siri/Whoever. Replacing their accent with a favoured grandchilds will put granny at ease when using them (not todays granny, but tomorrows).
Accent prejudice is a thing, at least according to The Economist [1], so the ability to change accent as well as language could become an important feature in AI adoption.
1 - https://www.economist.com/blogs/prospero/2015/01/johnson-accents
"How about a robot-sex-doll with the same voice as your wife?"
I don't know, I just associate SWIMBO's dulcet tones with various other types of demands: principally the making, without delay, of various caffeinated and alcoholic beverages... and being constantly told to put object x (shoes, gadgets, wires) away.
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