After voice profiles have been created for phone calls for many years, a new AI-powered tool for generating voice profiles is now available.
The Acapela Group offers with its new tool “my own voice” a way for everyone to secure their own voice in a few minutes for free. This service is particularly aimed at people who can no longer speak for themselves. Acapela has been active in the text-to-speech sector for about 25 years and was recently acquired by Tobii Dynavox (based in Sweden). Despite the acquisition, Acapela continues to operate independently. About 7-8 years ago, it was cumbersome to customize a synthetic voice for oneself, and the results were not particularly good. But much has changed today, as Acapela co-founder Remy Cadic explains: “We can create a voice with only 50 recorded sentences; it takes about 10 minutes, and the voice is ready the next day.”
The “my own voice” service is an important tool for people who may lose their voice. The voice banking process is now as simple as possible, which is invaluable for many people. Additionally, Acapela has made the recording script easier to read for children and improved the quality of synthetic children’s voices. The stored voice can also be recorded and re-recorded or artificially aged. Compatibility with offline devices that do not have the latest neural processing chip is also provided.
However, creating a digital voice profile also poses risks to privacy and cybersecurity. To date, no data is known about how the voice profiles are stored and who has access to the data. The risk of an attack on a voice database exists, as databases from hospitals, schools, and the police have already been attacked. Additionally, there is a risk of voice profile misuse by hackers. After they already access login data and email passwords, they could even succeed in phone verification with the voice profile.
It is important to keep the risks of digital voice profiles in mind and take appropriate measures to protect privacy and cybersecurity. In particular, with regard to creating voice profiles for children. Only those who really need such a service due to physical limitations should create a voice profile.
Those who have their own voice should protect it and not reveal it, and not further advance the creation of a digital identity and entity.
#PRVCYTips
- Avoid calls over the telephone network. Here, a voice matching is created, which can be assigned to your identity because the contract with telephone service providers is verified through your ID or passport. Better to use VoIP and VPN connections for internet telephony.
- Do not use voice control! TVs, phones, navigation, and search engines have mostly integrated a way to voice control by now. Even if it seems convenient, your digital ID profile will be expanded with information about your search queries and inputs, and the voice profile will be continuously fed.
