Tech experts optimistic about AI voice cloning — even as they sound the alarm about devastating ‘deepfakes’

DESPITE the enormous risk associated with AI voice cloning tools, some experts believe the emerging technology could be used for good.

PodCastle, an artificial intelligence-powered podcast platform, aims to rewrite the conversation around artificial intelligence.

The company aims to simplify content creation through the help of AI tools.

CEO and founder Artavazd Yeritsyan spoke with The US Sun to clarify the company’s mission.

“We are changing the way audio and video content is created, making it much easier for creators and teams by natively integrating AI technologies,” explained Yeritsyan.

“We basically want to make content creation radically simple and accessible to everyone.”

In simple terms, users can record audio and video using Podcastle’s infrastructure and make adjustments using AI.

This means removing pauses, cutting words, or simply improving quality – all with the help of an in-house trained artificial intelligence model.

Users can even clone their voices and use a text-to-speech function if they don’t feel like recording something.

But artificial intelligence remains a highly controversial issue. As models are trained on vast data sets, critics question where exactly this information comes from.

To make matters worse, tech giants like Meta have admitted to scrubbing data from public social media profiles to train AI.

This revelation sparked concern among data privacy experts and even triggered an inquiry led by the Information Commissioner’s Office in the United Kingdom.

There is also a chance that people will not use AI tools for their intended purposes. Voice cloning technology, in particular, has a high potential for abuse.

The risk is so great that Microsoft has refused to release its latest text-to-speech generator, VALL-E 2, citing fears of “misuse.”

The tool can replicate voices after being trained in just a few seconds of audio and avoids recurring sounds or phrases during the decoding process to make the output more natural.

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Microsoft says VALL-E 2 is the first of its kind to achieve “human parity,” meaning it meets or exceeds human likeness standards.

But the company has no plans to incorporate the tool into a product or expand public access, as explained in its website.

“This may lead to potential risks in misuse of the model, such as spoofing voice identification or impersonating a specific speaker,” says a separate document. Ethics statement.

Fueling developers’ fears is the rise in so-called “vishing” attacks, in which scammers pose as the victim’s friends or relatives, replicating their voices – a process commonly aided by AI.

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The results are so convincing that the victim may voluntarily hand over information such as credit card numbers or bank account details.

PodCastle has checks in place to prevent the creation of deepfakes, or synthetic audio that portrays a person saying something they didn’t say.

“When we started building the technology, we really wanted to be the most ethical and safe platform for making voice clones,” said Yeritsyan.

To discourage misuse, PodCastle implements “hurdles” in the content creation process.

“To clone your voice, you need to actually record the phrases we give you,” explained Yeritsyan.

“Based on how you pronounce them, how you create them, we understand that it’s you and only you can use it.”

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A user’s content is then encrypted or scrambled so that hackers cannot interpret it.

“That’s why we don’t have a single case of deepfakes on our platform,” concluded Yeritsyan.

The CEO’s optimism is a reminder that some technology pioneers have found a silver lining amid the doom and gloom.

Yeritsyan anticipates the expansion of voice cloning technology in the near future, especially with regards to accessibility and translation features.

“People with disabilities who cannot speak can easily use text-to-speech to disseminate content,” said the CEO.

He is also an advocate of AI education to encourage responsible use of the technology.

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PodCastle offers discounted subscriptions to students, believing they will be required to use similar tools once they enter the job market.

And Yeritsyan is not alone in his hopes that voice cloning technology can be used for good. Companies like Microsoft have similar aspirations for tools like VALL-E.

As it stands, adding subtitles on streaming platforms is seen as an inconvenience due to the requirement for “manual labor,” Yeritsyan said.

“And it’s very expensive for the company, so unless there’s government regulation, a lot of companies just won’t do it because of the cost.”

However, AI voice cloning technology can reduce time and money spent, leaving the exercise of goodwill in the hands of companies.

“I think we’re at a stage where these technologies can actually be useful in a more tangible and practical way,” Yeritsyan said.

What are the arguments against AI?

Artificial intelligence is a highly controversial issue and it seems like everyone has a position on it. Here are some common arguments against this:

Job Loss – Some industry experts argue that AI will create new niches in the job market, and as some roles are eliminated, others will appear. However, many artists and writers insist that the argument is ethical, since generative AI tools are being trained on their work and would not work otherwise.

Ethics – When AI is trained on a dataset, much of the content is taken from the internet. This is almost always, if not exclusively, done without notifying the people whose work is being performed.

Privacy – Content from personal social media accounts can be fed into language models to train them. Concerns have emerged as Meta unveils its AI assistants on platforms like Facebook and Instagram. There have been legal challenges to this issue: in 2016, legislation was created to protect personal data in the EU, and similar laws are in the works in the United States.

Misinformation – As AI tools extract information from the Internet, they may take things out of context or experience hallucinations that produce absurd responses. Tools like Copilot on Bing and Google’s generative search AI are always at risk of getting things wrong. Some critics argue this could have lethal effects – such as AI prescribing erroneous health information.