OpenAI has revealed a voice-cloning tool it plans to keep tightly controlled until safeguards are in place to thwart audio fakes meant to dupe listeners.
A model called Voice Engine can essentially duplicate someone’s speech based on a 15-second audio sample, according to an OpenAI blog post sharing results of a small-scale test of the tool.
We recognise that generating speech that resembles people’s voices has serious risks, which are especially top of mind in an election year, the San Francisco-based company said on Friday.
We are engaging with US and international partners from across government, media, entertainment, education, civil society and beyond to ensure we are incorporating their feedback as we build.
Disinformation researchers fear rampant misuse of AI-powered applications in a pivotal election year thanks to proliferating voice cloning tools, which are cheap, easy to use and hard to trace.
Acknowledging these problems, OpenAI said it was taking a cautious and informed approach to a broader release due to the potential for synthetic voice misuse.
