OpenAI Unveils Audio Tool That Recreates Human Voices – The New York Times
Artificial Intelligence
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The start-up is sharing the technology, Voice Engine, with a small group of early testers as it tries to understand the potential dangers.
Reporting from San Francisco
First, OpenAI offered a tool that allowed people to create digital images simply by describing what they wanted to see. Then, it built similar technology that generated full-motion video like something from a Hollywood movie.
Now, it has unveiled technology that can recreate someone’s voice.
The high-profile A.I. start-up said on Friday that a small group of businesses was testing a new OpenAI system, Voice Engine, that can recreate a person’s voice from a 15-second recording. If you upload a recording of yourself and a paragraph of text, it can read the text using a synthetic voice that sounds like yours.
The text does not have to be in your native language. If you are an English speaker, for example, it can recreate your voice in Spanish, French, Chinese or many other languages.
OpenAI is not sharing the technology more widely because it is still trying to understand its potential dangers. Like image and video generators, a voice generator could help spread disinformation across social media. It could also allow criminals to impersonate people online or during phone calls.
The company said it was particularly worried that this kind of technology could be used to break voice authenticators that control access to online banking accounts and other personal applications.
“This is a sensitive thing, and it is important to get it right,” an OpenAI product manager, Jeff Harris, said in an interview.
The company is exploring ways of watermarking synthetic voices or adding controls that prevent people from using the technology with the voices of politicians or other prominent figures.
Last month, OpenAI took a similar approach when it unveiled its video generator, Sora. It showed off the technology but did not publicly release it.
OpenAI is among the many companies that have developed a new breed of A.I. technology that can quickly and easily generate synthetic voices. They include tech giants like Google as well as start-ups like the New York-based ElevenLabs. (The New York Times has sued OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, on claims of copyright infringement involving artificial intelligence systems that generate text.)
Businesses can use these technologies to generate audiobooks, give voice to online chatbots or even build an automated radio station DJ. Since last year, OpenAI has used its technology to power a version of ChatGPT that speaks. And it has long offered businesses an array of voices that can be used for similar applications. All of them were built from clips provided by voice actors.
But the company has not yet offered a public tool that would allow individuals and businesses to recreate voices from a short clip as Voice Engine does. The ability to recreate any voice in this way, Mr. Harris said, is what makes the technology dangerous. The technology could be particularly dangerous in an election year, he said.
In January, New Hampshire residents received robocall messages that dissuaded them from voting in the state primary in a voice that was most likely artificially generated to sound like President Biden. The Federal Communications Commission later outlawed such calls.
Mr. Harris said OpenAI had no immediate plans to make money from the technology. He said the tool could be particularly useful to people who lost their voices through illness or accident.
He demonstrated how the technology had been used to recreate a woman’s voice after brain cancer damaged it. She could now speak, he said, after providing a brief recording of a presentation she had once made as a high schooler.
Cade Metz writes about artificial intelligence, driverless cars, robotics, virtual reality and other emerging areas of technology. More about Cade Metz
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David Autor, an M.I.T. economist and tech skeptic, argues that A.I. is fundamentally different from past waves of computerization.
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This article was autogenerated from a news feed from CDO TIMES selected high quality news and research sources. There was no editorial review conducted beyond that by CDO TIMES staff. Need help with any of the topics in our articles? Schedule your free CDO TIMES Tech Navigator call today to stay ahead of the curve and gain insider advantages to propel your business!
Advertisement
Supported by
The start-up is sharing the technology, Voice Engine, with a small group of early testers as it tries to understand the potential dangers.
Reporting from San Francisco
First, OpenAI offered a tool that allowed people to create digital images simply by describing what they wanted to see. Then, it built similar technology that generated full-motion video like something from a Hollywood movie.
Now, it has unveiled technology that can recreate someone’s voice.
The high-profile A.I. start-up said on Friday that a small group of businesses was testing a new OpenAI system, Voice Engine, that can recreate a person’s voice from a 15-second recording. If you upload a recording of yourself and a paragraph of text, it can read the text using a synthetic voice that sounds like yours.
The text does not have to be in your native language. If you are an English speaker, for example, it can recreate your voice in Spanish, French, Chinese or many other languages.
OpenAI is not sharing the technology more widely because it is still trying to understand its potential dangers. Like image and video generators, a voice generator could help spread disinformation across social media. It could also allow criminals to impersonate people online or during phone calls.
The company said it was particularly worried that this kind of technology could be used to break voice authenticators that control access to online banking accounts and other personal applications.
“This is a sensitive thing, and it is important to get it right,” an OpenAI product manager, Jeff Harris, said in an interview.
The company is exploring ways of watermarking synthetic voices or adding controls that prevent people from using the technology with the voices of politicians or other prominent figures.
Last month, OpenAI took a similar approach when it unveiled its video generator, Sora. It showed off the technology but did not publicly release it.
OpenAI is among the many companies that have developed a new breed of A.I. technology that can quickly and easily generate synthetic voices. They include tech giants like Google as well as start-ups like the New York-based ElevenLabs. (The New York Times has sued OpenAI and its partner, Microsoft, on claims of copyright infringement involving artificial intelligence systems that generate text.)
Businesses can use these technologies to generate audiobooks, give voice to online chatbots or even build an automated radio station DJ. Since last year, OpenAI has used its technology to power a version of ChatGPT that speaks. And it has long offered businesses an array of voices that can be used for similar applications. All of them were built from clips provided by voice actors.
But the company has not yet offered a public tool that would allow individuals and businesses to recreate voices from a short clip as Voice Engine does. The ability to recreate any voice in this way, Mr. Harris said, is what makes the technology dangerous. The technology could be particularly dangerous in an election year, he said.
In January, New Hampshire residents received robocall messages that dissuaded them from voting in the state primary in a voice that was most likely artificially generated to sound like President Biden. The Federal Communications Commission later outlawed such calls.
Mr. Harris said OpenAI had no immediate plans to make money from the technology. He said the tool could be particularly useful to people who lost their voices through illness or accident.
He demonstrated how the technology had been used to recreate a woman’s voice after brain cancer damaged it. She could now speak, he said, after providing a brief recording of a presentation she had once made as a high schooler.
Cade Metz writes about artificial intelligence, driverless cars, robotics, virtual reality and other emerging areas of technology. More about Cade Metz
News and Analysis
U.S. clinics are starting to offer patients a new service: having their mammograms read not just by a radiologist, but also by an A.I. model.
OpenAI unveiled Voice Engine, an A.I. technology that can recreate a person’s voice from a 15-second recording.
Amazon said it had added $2.75 billion to its investment in Anthropic, an A.I. start-up that competes with companies like OpenAI and Google.
The Age of A.I.
A.I. tools can replace much of Wall Street’s entry-level white-collar work, raising tough questions about the future of finance.
The boom in A.I. technology has put a more sophisticated spin on a kind of gig work that doesn’t require leaving the house: training A.I, models.
Teen girls are confronting an epidemic of deepfake nudes in schools across the United States, as middle and high school students have used A.I. to fabricate explicit images of female classmates.
A.I. is peering into restaurant garbage pails and crunching grocery-store data to try to figure out how to send less uneaten food into dumpsters.
David Autor, an M.I.T. economist and tech skeptic, argues that A.I. is fundamentally different from past waves of computerization.
Economists doubt that A.I. is already visible in productivity data. Big companies, however, talk often about adopting it to improve efficiency.
Advertisement
This article was autogenerated from a news feed from CDO TIMES selected high quality news and research sources. There was no editorial review conducted beyond that by CDO TIMES staff. Need help with any of the topics in our articles? Schedule your free CDO TIMES Tech Navigator call today to stay ahead of the curve and gain insider advantages to propel your business!
