Business
OpenAI Reveals Voice Engine, But Won’t Yet Publicly Release The Risky AI Voice-Cloning Technology
SAN FRANCISCO — OpenAI, the company behind ChatGPT, is entering the voice assistant market and demonstrating new technology that can clone a person’s voice, but claims it will not be released publicly due to safety concerns.
The artificial intelligence startup introduced its new Voice Engine technology on Friday, less than a week after filing a trademark registration for the moniker. The business claims it can replicate a person’s voice from a 15-second audio of them conversing.
OpenAI Reveals Voice Engine, But Won’t Yet Publicly Release The Risky AI Voice-Cloning Technology
OpenAI intends to preview it with early testers “but not widely release this technology at this time” because of the risks of misuse.
The San Francisco-based company said in a statement, “We recognize that generating speech that resembles people’s voices has serious risks, which are especially relevant in an election year.”
OpenAI Reveals Voice Engine, But Won’t Yet Publicly Release The Risky AI Voice-Cloning Technology
In New Hampshire, officials are investigating robocalls issued to hundreds of voters shortly before the presidential primary. The calls contained an AI-generated voice impersonating President Joe Biden.
Several startup companies now market voice-cloning technology, some of which are available to the general public or specific commercial customers such as entertainment studios.
OpenAI Reveals Voice Engine, But Won’t Yet Publicly Release The Risky AI Voice-Cloning Technology
According to the AI compnay, early Voice Engine testers have pledged not to impersonate someone without their agreement and to reveal that the voices are AI-generated. The company, best known for its chatbot and image-generator DALL-E, used a similar strategy when unveiling but not publicly distributing its video-generator Sora.
However, a trademark application submitted on March 19 indicates that OpenAI intends to enter the speech recognition and digital voice assistant market. Eventually, upgrading such technologies could allow OpenAI to compete with other speech products like Amazon’s Alexa.
source – (AP)
