Eleven Labs, the startup that developed the AI-assisted voice cloning tool, says it is seeing an “increase in abuse” of its software as voice manipulation spreads online.
The London-based company recently launched a beta version of its platform to create “instruments that produce words with sounds very close to reality”, raising $2 million.
Users of the anonymous 4chan page have shared messages created with a program that contains the fake voices of a number of celebrities, including British actress Emma Watson and American TV presenter Joe Rogan, in order to force them to say racist and gender-based sentences.
In one of these messages, a voice similar to that of Emma Watson is heard reading an excerpt from Adolf Hitler’s book Mein Kampf, and in another, a voice similar to the voice of American analyst Ben Shapiro, who threatens with rape the deputy of Alexandria Ocasio. -Cortez.
The voices of directors Quentin Tarantino and George Lucas were also used.
“We want to address this issue by taking additional protective measures,” Eleven Labs wrote on Monday.
Crazy weekend – thanks to everyone who tried our beta platform. While we are seeing our technology overwhelmingly put to good use, we are also seeing an increase in the misuse of voice cloning. We want to reach out to the Twitter community for thoughts and feedback!
— Eleven Laboratories (@elevenlabsio) January 30, 2023
The startup’s proposals include strengthening the user identification process, better validation of intellectual property rights on forms, and the adoption of manual verification procedures.
And Eleven Labs is one of several companies that develop programs based on artificial intelligence software that anyone can use.
These tools have attracted a lot of attention since OpenAI launched the GBT chatbot late last year, which is capable of answering various questions and writing texts.
However, these programs are accompanied by concerns about “deepfake” technology, which is based on the digital processing of images or sounds to match reality.
