Athan Kang (10) | STAFF REPORTER
Deepfakes and AI voice changers have taken the world by storm, By using artificial intelligence to almost perfectly imitate and generate anyone’s voice through a process called deep learning, this new form of technology has certainly brought an ascended level of innovation to the world in a controversial, unethical way.
Besides making Drake covers of famous songs, many people have taken advantage of artificially generated voices in novel ways. For instance, some individuals used voice changers to remain anonymous on the internet. By using a synthesized voice, one is able to stay safe and unknown while vocally interacting online.
In other cases, it may facilitate certain tasks. Doing voice-overs can be efficiently done with advanced technology using a generated voice to perfectly rehearse one’s desired lines within record time. However, this would also eliminate the possibility of hiring paid voice actors.
Deepfake voices have also launched many trends on social media platforms such as TikTok that involve political figures exchanging unconventional statements. Even though it seems completely harmless, a portion of the public believes that these videos are tarnishing the public images of people like Joe Biden and the Pope by using deep fakes to make immature comments with their stolen voices on the internet.
Furthermore, popular songs artificially covered by the voices of other artists like Drake have also been on the rise with many people enjoying these machine-synthesized songs while the music industry rambles to take these covers down due to various copyright violations. Such as the one time when a fake Drake track was uploaded online with the name “Heart on my Sleeve”, gaining tons of recognition and popularity, notably on TikTok and Spotify but was taken down because of copyright infringement.
Artificial intelligence has once again managed to forge another unbelievable advancement, bringing humanity one step closer to the future while also inflicting immediate backlash. Ranging from remaining anonymous online to covering songs with fake voices, deep fakes and AI voice changers have begun to vocally terrorize the public in numerous controversial aspects.
