I was listening to NPR the other day and there was a segment on people using A.I. to impersonate famous people and the issues that could arise.
I had dabbled with A.I. a bit (CharGPT and so on) so being an aging DJ and Voicemail Voice, I decided to upload a sample of my voice and then some text to see if it sounded like me.
I uploaded a sample from an audio blog I posted decades ago and uploaded some text from a recent blog. I was limited to perhaps 1,000 character for free, but it does sound like me! Scary, but useful. I would love to have it record all my old blogs (over 1,000) but there are many typos and it does not correct them.
Some banks and investment firms are using voice recognition as part of their authentication process. I wonder if these AI generated voices are good enough to pass these authentication process?
I found a free text to speech converter on the internet. I typed in what I wanted my voice mail greeting to be. When the program’s computer generated voice read the text out loud, I put my phone near the computer’s speakers and recorded the new greeting.
Friends think it’s funny and robocallers probably just go away.
I have an issue with letting a utility (for example) use my voice for recognition, but it is not for the reasons you think.
I am the I.T. guy for a business but was not yet listed on the account as a verified caller. The owner was away in meetings and I had to swap out some equipment to get the Internet back up. I called, and the cable company asked me my name, but would not let me make any change to the account, even though I had a copy of the current bill, pass code and so on.
I hung up and called back. When they asked who was calling I replied with the account owners name. I gave the pass code and then asked to put my I.T. guys name on as a approved caller. They did that.
So by calling in and telling the truth who I was, I was denied. All I did was lie and they let me make the same changes.
If we had agreed to allow them to use our voice for recongition I would not have been able to get into the account. Now that I am a valid caller I can just add my voice to my name on the account, but why, when it turns out that only restricts honest people?