I cloned my voice with AI and even my wife can’t tell the difference
Listening to your own voice and saying words you’ve never said before is an unsettling experience, but in the AI future we’re living through now in 2024, it’s almost no surprise. Of course, AI can now clone your voice and make it sound just like you! It’s almost to be expected, isn’t it?
What’s surprising to me, at least, is how easy it is to do. You can access an AI voice cloner online for free and clone your voice so it can say anything you want in just a few minutes. The workout only takes 30 seconds, then you’re good to go. There are also no real security checks or restrictions on what you can do with that voice once you’ve trained it. So you can make him swear or threaten someone. There hardly seem to be any guardrails.
Who is that voice?
If you type “AI Voice Cloner” into a Google search bar, you’ll be spoiled for choice. Many voice cloners require you to sign up for a monthly fee before they can clone your voice, but quite a few of them have a free option. I tried a few of the free choices and some of them, despite the promise of unparalleled accuracy, produced a robot version of my voice that wouldn’t fool anyone. No, I had a higher goal in mind: I wanted to produce a clone of my voice that would fool my wife.
Finally I decided Speak out to clone my voice because it combined ease of use, full access to the voice cloner and a 30 second training time. Once you create a free account on Speechify, simply talk into your microphone for 30 seconds or more to train your AI voice. Once you’ve done that, you can type some text and click the Generate button to hear the words back in your own voice.
If you’re concerned about security, Speechify has a pretty detailed overview privacy statementand it does say that it will never sell your data and that it is committed to protecting the privacy of your data. Your uploaded voice may therefore only be used by you.
I thought what I made was quite convincing, but I had to see what my wife thought about it first. I crawled behind her and played a sample clip of “Me” and…well, she laughed because she could tell it was coming from my MacBook’s speakers, but she was impressed. “Actually,” she said, “I think it looks like you, but better”.
And that is the advantage of cloning your voice. It doesn’t make mistakes when it talks. There are no ‘ums’ and ‘ahs’ and everything is right the first time. When I think of how many times I’ve had to record and re-record the intros to my podcasts because I couldn’t get it quite right, I see an obvious use for an AI voice cloner. But that’s also a danger with AI voice cloning, because you can make the fake voice say just about anything.
Voices from the afterlife
While voice-stealing scams are a concern, the security implications have ramifications that extend even beyond the grave. Recently, the legendary late British talk show host Michael Parkinson surprised everyone by announcing that he was launching a new podcast called Virtually Parkinson. Thanks to the wonders of AI, his voice would once again interview people in real time. In Parkinson’s case, his estate fully supports the podcast, but what if permission wasn’t given?
David Attenborough, the granddaddy of BBC natural history programming, recently expressed unease about an AI version of his voice, describing it as “disturbing“We live in an age where AI can create podcasts without any human interaction and even AI sports presenters are starting to appear. So in a sense we shouldn’t be surprised that it is so easy for AI to clone our voices, but the consequences could be profound.
With AI giving celebrities (or rather their estates) the ability to continue working long after they have traveled this mortal coil, the future for celebrities and individuals alike suddenly seems very uncertain.
