AI firm reveals new expertise which might clone an individual’s voice

The artificial intelligence company unveiled its new voice engine technology on 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 that person speaking.

OpenAI says it plans to test it with early testers, but “will not generally release this technology at this time” due to the risk of misuse.

“We recognize that producing speech that resembles people’s voices poses serious risks, which are particularly great 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 imitating President Joe Biden.

A number of start-up companies are already selling voice cloning technology, some of which are available to the public or to select business customers such as entertainment studios.

OpenAI says its initial voice engine testers agreed not to impersonate a person without their consent and to disclose that the voices are AI-generated.

The company, best known for its chatbot and image generator DALL-E, took a similar approach when it announced but did not widely release its video generator Sora.

However, a trademark application filed on March 19 shows that OpenAI is likely aiming to get into the speech recognition and digital voice assistant business.

Ultimately, improving this technology could help OpenAI compete with other voice products like Amazon's Alexa.