AI-generated deepfake voices can fool both humans and smart assistants

By Chris Stokel-Walker

Freely available software that can mimic a specific individual’s voice produces results that can fool people and voice-activated tools such as smart home assistants.

Security researchers are increasingly concerned by deepfake software, which uses artificial intelligence to alter videos or photographs to map one person’s face onto another.

Emily Wenger at the University of Chicago and her colleagues wanted to investigate audio versions of these tools, which generate realistic speech based on a sample of a person’s voice, after reading about …