OpenAI reveals Voice Engine, but won’t yet publicly release the risky AI voice-cloning technology

By: The Associated Press Posted: 2:26 PM CDT Friday, Mar. 29, 2024 Last Modified: 4:40 PM CDT Friday, Mar. 29, 2024

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — ChatGPT-maker OpenAI is getting into the voice assistant business and showing off new technology that can clone a person's voice, but says it won't yet release it publicly due to safety concerns.

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This article was published 29/03/2024 (897 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

SAN FRANCISCO (AP) — ChatGPT-maker OpenAI is getting into the voice assistant business and showing off new technology that can clone a person’s voice, but says it won’t yet release it publicly due to safety concerns.

The artificial intelligence company unveiled its new Voice Engine technology Friday, just over a week after filing a trademark application for the name. The company claims that it can recreate a person’s voice with just 15 seconds of recording of that person talking.

OpenAI says it plans to preview it with early testers “but not widely release this technology at this time” because of the dangers of misuse.

FILE - The OpenAI logo is seen on a mobile phone in front of a computer screen which displays output from ChatGPT, March 21, 2023, in Boston. A wave of AI deepfakes tied to elections in Europe and Asia has coursed through social media for months, serving as a warning for more than 50 countries heading to the polls this year. (AP Photo/Michael Dwyer, File)

“We recognize that generating speech that resembles people’s voices has serious risks, which are especially top of mind in an election year,” the San Francisco company said in a statement.

In New Hampshire, authorities are investigating robocalls sent to thousands of voters just before the presidential primary that featured an AI-generated voice mimicking President Joe Biden.

A number of startup companies already sell voice-cloning technology, some of which is accessible to the public or for select business customers such as entertainment studios.

OpenAI says early Voice Engine testers have agreed to not impersonate a person without their consent and to disclose that the voices are AI-generated. The company, best known for its chatbot and the image-generator DALL-E, took a similar approach in announcing but not widely releasing its video-generator Sora.

However a trademark application filed on March 19 shows that OpenAI likely aims to get into the business of speech recognition and digital voice assistant. Eventually, improving such technology could help OpenAI compete with the likes of other voice products such as Amazon’s Alexa.