AI Can Clone Your Favorite Podcast Host’s Voice

Balasubramaniyan says voice AI providers want to supply safety on par with that of different firms that retailer private information, like monetary or medical info.

“You have to ask the company, ‘how is my AI voice going to be stored? Are you actually storing my recordings? Are you storing it encrypted? Who has access to it?’” Balasubramaniyan says. “It is a part of me. It is my intimate self. I need to protect it just as well.”

Podcastle says the voice fashions are end-to-end encrypted and that the corporate doesn’t preserve any recordings after creating the mannequin. Only the account holder who recorded the voice clips can entry them. Podcastle additionally doesn’t permit different audio to be uploaded or analyzed on Revoice. In truth, the individual creating a replica of their voice has to report the strains of prewritten textual content instantly into Revoice’s app. They can’t simply add a prerecorded file.

“You are the one giving permission and creating the content,” Podcastle’s Yeritsyan says. “Whether it’s artificial or original, if this is not a deepfaked voice, it’s this person’s voice and he put it out there. I don’t see issues.”

Podcastle is hoping that with the ability to render audio in solely a consenting individual’s cloned voice would disincentivize folks from making themselves say something too horrible. Currently, the service doesn’t have any content material moderation or restrictions on particular phrases or phrases. Yeritsyan says it’s as much as no matter service or outlet publishes the audio—like Spotify, Apple Podcasts, or YouTube—to police the content material that will get pushed onto their platforms.

“There are huge moderation teams on any social platforms or any streaming platform,” Yeritsyan says. “So that’s their job to not let anyone else use the fake voice and create something stupid or something not ethical and publish it there.”

Even if the very thorny concern of voice deepfakes and nonconsensual AI clones is addressed, it’s nonetheless unclear whether or not folks will settle for a computerized clone as a suitable stand-in for a human. 

At the tip of March, the comic Drew Carey used one other voice AI service, ElevenLabs, to launch a complete episode of a radio present that was learn by his voice clone. For essentially the most half, folks hated it. Podcasting is an intimate medium, and the distinct human connection you’re feeling when listening to folks have a dialog or inform tales is definitely misplaced when the robots step to the microphone.

But what occurs when the know-how advances to the purpose you can’t inform the distinction? Does it matter that it’s probably not your favourite podcaster in your ear? Cloned AI speech has a methods to go earlier than it’s indistinguishable from human speech, however it’s certainly catching up rapidly. Just a yr in the past, AI-generated photos appeared cartoonish, and now they’re lifelike sufficient to idiot hundreds of thousands into pondering the Pope had some kick-ass new outerwear. It’s straightforward to think about AI-generated audio may have an analogous trajectory.

There’s additionally one other very human trait driving curiosity in these AI-powered instruments: laziness. AI voice tech—assuming it will get to the purpose the place it could possibly precisely mimic actual voices—will make it straightforward to do fast edits or retakes with out having to get the host again right into a studio.

“Ultimately, the creator economy is going to win,” Balasubramaniyan says. “No matter how much we think about the ethical implications, it’s going to win out because you’ve just made people’s lives simple.”