A New Artificial Intelligence Speech Tool Is Already Being Exploited. ElevenLabs, a startup company that specialises in speech AI, recently released a beta version of their platform. This version enables users to clone the sounds of other people or develop whole new synthetic voices for use in text-to-speech audio. It didn’t take the internet more than a few days to figure out how to use the latter for evil purposes, though.
A New Artificial Intelligence Speech Tool Is Already Being Exploited
The company has disclosed on Twitter that it is seeing a “increasing number of voice cloning misuse cases,” and that it is pondering a way to address the issue by “implementing additional safeguards.” The tweet also states that the company is seeing a “increasing number of voice cloning misuse cases.”
In spite of the fact that ElevenLabs did not clarify on what it meant by “misuse situations,” Motherboard was able to locate posts on 4chan that contained clips containing synthesised voices that sound like celebrities reading or saying something that may be misconstrued.
Crazy weekend – thank you to everyone for trying out our Beta platform. While we see our tech being overwhelmingly applied to positive use, we also see an increasing number of voice cloning misuse cases. We want to reach out to Twitter community for thoughts and feedback!
— ElevenLabs (@elevenlabsio) January 30, 2023
According to reports, one of the clips included a voice that could have been Emma Watson reading a passage from Mein Kampf. Users also shared audio snippets that convey offensive attitudes such as homophobia, transphobia, violence, and racism. A post on 4chan that contained a large collection of the voice files also included a link to ElevenLab’s platform. It is not quite apparent whether or not all of the clips utilised ElevenLab’s technology, but the link was provided in the post.
Deepfake Audio Clips From AI
It’s possible that the appearance of “deepfake” audio clips shouldn’t come as much of a surprise considering that we’ve saw a phenomenon very similar to it take place a few years back. Deepfake pornography is a subgenre of deepfake movies that involves the alteration of existing pornographic materials to include the faces of famous people. This trend emerged as a result of advancements in artificial intelligence and machine learning. And you’ve probably noticed that some of those videos feature Emma Watson’s face in them.
ElevenLabs is currently soliciting user comments to better understand how to stop customers from abusing their technologies. Its current ideas include adding more levels to its account verification to enable voice cloning, such as forcing users to provide payment information or an ID. Additionally, it is considering requiring users to upload a photo of themselves.
It is also considering requiring users to authenticate that they own the copyright of the voice that they wish to clone. This might be done by asking users to provide a sample of their voice reading prompted text. Finally, the business is considering doing away with its Voice Lab tool entirely in favour of having customers send in requests for voice cloning, which the company would then have to manually authenticate.
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