Microsoft's new voice mimicking AI VALL-E presents both opportunities and risks
Are the capabilities of VALL-E to spoof a voice also an infringement of the right of publicity?
Newsrael News Desk 22.01.2023
CTech reports that Microsoft recently announced that it has developed a new artificial intelligence that can simulate anyone’s voice after listening to just three seconds of audio recording. VALL-E is a neural codec language model. According to their paper, the AI tokenizes speech and employs its algorithms to use those tokens to generate waveforms that sound like the speaker, even preserving the speaker’s timbre and emotional tone.
Fortunately, Microsoft’s responsible AI corporate principles have resulted in the company withholding the AI’s code. Clearly there is the possibility of unethical uses for this technology. Potential nefarious uses range from bypassing voice biometric locks, to creating realistically sounding deep fakes, to causing general havoc and distress.
Consider a low-tech voice spoof: In the United Kingdom, a hospital caring for Kate Middleton was famously duped into thinking that the Queen and then Prince Charles had called to talk to the Duchess, by two on-air Australian radio personalities. The nurse who took the call committed suicide soon after. Notably, beyond being shunned socially and professionally, the two radio hosts never faced criminal or civil charges.
In addition to these aforementioned concerns, there might also be a problem of widespread infringement of a person’s right of publicity, a form of intellectual property.
In 2004, the Israeli Supreme Court in Aloniel v McDonald recognized a right of publicity beyond privacy laws. These rights provide some form of ownership and control of one’s own image, name and voice. Subsequently in 2016, this right was further expanded in a lawsuit against two Israeli companies, Beverly Hills Fashion and Ha-Mashbir. The companies were purportedly using the artist Salvador Dali’s name for commercial purposes. (In re Fundacio Gala Salvador Dali v. V.S Marketing). Under this ruling, the right to one’s voice and other characteristics was expanded and deemed to be a transferable right, lasting like other IP rights for years after death.
Source CTech/Twitter - Image - Reuters
Did you find this article interesting?