Like some celebrities recently, Emma Watson's voice has been misused for deepfakes. The British actress, who otherwise shows a lot of commitment to human rights and climate protection, is said to have recited “Mein Kampf” in a recording from Hitler's pamphlet.
However, the recording does not represent her real voice but rather a reproduction generated by artificial intelligence. This AI reads out everything it is asked to do. Eleven Labs this and other misuse of its voice generator .
As “ Vice” reports , this tool became extremely popular with internet trolls during a short-term test phase.
Numerous experiments of this nature were discovered there on the infamous imageboard 4chan. Eleven Labs, which was founded by former employees of Google and the surveillance company Palantir, released its new tool “Voice Labs” for testing before the weekend, apparently with numerous abuses.
Calls for violence from prominent voices
In addition to the voices of Emma Watson, many other voices of high-profile personalities were cloned, including Joe Rogan and the conservative commentator Ben Shapiro. By reproducing their voices, racist and transphobic statements as well as many calls for violence were virtually put into their mouths.
Shapiro allegedly distances himself from Democratic MP Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez in a derogatory manner. Fictional characters like Rick Sanchez from “Rick and Morty” can also be found beating his “damn wife to death.” Relevant links online indicate that the deepfakes were created using the beta version of the Eleven Labs tool.
From now on the tool can only be used with payment
In the wake of the cloned voices being published online, Eleven-Labs reported on Twitter that there was an “increasing number of misuses” of the voice duplicator. However, it should be emphasized that the software was mainly used for “positive purposes”.
Even if, according to the company, every fake voice produced can be traced back to the respective user account, they would like to secure the generator better in the future and, after some time to think about it, have now decided on several steps.
In the future, the use of the “Voice Labs” tool will only be possible for paid accounts. The company reports that the majority of deepfakes created were created by users with free access, which can be created anonymously. Furthermore, only a limited selection of prefabricated voices should be usable.
Test tool should be released soon
In the coming week, they also want to make software available that can be used to check whether a voice recording was created with Voice Labs. It should also be possible to report misuse using this software. Accounts that create “harmful content” should then be permanently blocked.
In addition, a new subscription for five dollars a month is to come onto the market, which includes test access to all offers - but with a lower character limit and identity verification via a credit card. The company hopes that this will have a deterrent effect on misuse, as anonymity is significantly limited by the credit card on file. Previously, they had only considered letting users upload their own voice samples for verification or implementing verification using ID.
Overall, Eleven Labs has announced that it will continue to monitor developments and take further steps if necessary - even if this means removing features. However, in this case, affected users would receive a full refund of their subscription fees.
Source:
The standard
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