Analysis released Wednesday by LiveScience detailed how a new Microsoft invention is apparently “too dangerous to release” to the public.
Microsoft’s artificial intelligence innovation VALL-E 2 can allegedly recreate human voices so convincingly, from just a few seconds of audio, according to a paper published on the pre-print arXiv server, analyzed by LiveScience. The research team said the system was capable of creating “accurate, natural speech in the exact voice of the original speaker, comparable to human performance,” which sounds exactly like the type of dystopian nightmare we expect from Big Tech at this point, right?
By reaching human parity — generating speech that matches or exceeds the quality of human speech — Microsoft’s VALL-E 2 poses huge potential for misuse, the outlet noted. And I agree. Data released in May 2023 found that AI is fueling a rise in online and telephone scams as such little audio is needed to replicate a person’s voice, according to McAfee.
Scientists Don’t Want People To Be Mean, So They Created The Most ‘Toxic’ Thing Ever https://t.co/Ag72X2Khpb
— Daily Caller (@DailyCaller) April 23, 2024
In a survey of 7,054 people, one in 10 said they’d been targeted personally by such scams. And 77% of those victims lost money as a result. (RELATED: Everyone Joins Panic Over AI And The Apocalypse Months After We Warned You)
“VALL-E 2 is purely a research project. Currently, we have no plans to incorporate VALL-E 2 into a product or expand access to the public,” Microsoft’s research team wrote in a statement. “It may carry potential risks in the misuse of the model, such as spoofing voice identification or impersonating a specific speaker.”
I love that Microsoft says they “currently … have no plans.” Call me a skeptic, but I really don’t trust major corporations with technologies like this. Then again, I don’t trust anyone with technologies like this. Do you?
