Can you trust a voice anymore?
Three seconds of audio can clone a voice. What that means for scams, trust and the people it helps.
Theo Brooks
4 min read
A few years ago, faking someone's voice took a studio and hours of recordings. Today it takes a few seconds of audio and a free app. In this episode of Future Tense, Theo asks what happens to trust when any voice can be copied, and what we can do about it.
In this episode
- 00:00 — A phone call that was not what it seemed
- 05:30 — How voice cloning actually works
- 14:10 — Banks, scams and the family code word
- 26:45 — The good uses nobody talks about
- 37:20 — What regulation might look like
The call
The episode opens with a story from a listener. Her father received a call from what sounded exactly like her, crying, saying she had been in an accident and needed money urgently. He was halfway through a bank transfer before he thought to call her real number. She was at work, perfectly fine.
Stories like this are becoming common. The technology to copy a voice convincingly is now cheap, fast and easy to find. Theo talks to a security researcher who demonstrates the process live on the show, using a short clip of Theo's own voice from a previous episode.
