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"Similarly to how voice cloning raises fears about the consequences of its potential misuse, increasingly many people worry that the proliferation of AI technology will put professionals' livelihoods at risk. At Eleven, we see a future in which voice actors are able to license their voices to train speech models for specific use, in exchange for fees. Clients and studios will still gladly feature professional voice talent in their projects and using AI will simply contribute to faster turnaround times and greater freedom to experiment and establish direction in early development. The technology will change how spoken audio is designed and recorded but the fact that voice actors no longer need to be physically present for every session really gives them the freedom to be involved in more projects at any one time, as well as to truly immortalize their voices."

"Sixty years after her death, Édith Piaf's voice will be re-created using AI to narrate her biopic. As reported by Variety, Warner Music Group (WMG) has partnered with the Piaf estate to produce the feature-length film Edith. Artificial intelligence has been trained to replicate Piaf's voice by feeding it hundreds of voice clips, with WMG promising the resultant re-creation will "further enhance the authenticity and emotional impact of her story"."

"All of this probably means I should be worried about recent trends in artificial intelligence, which is encroaching on voice-over work in a manner similar to how it threatens the labour of visual artists and writers-both financially and ethically. The creep is only just beginning, with dubbing companies training software to replace human actors and tech companies introducing digital audiobook narration. But AI poses a threat to work opportunities across the board by giving producers the tools to recreate their favourite voices on demand, without the performer's knowledge or consent and without additional compensation. It's clear that AI will transform the arts sector, and the voice-over industry offers an early, unsettling model for what this future may look like."

""If they are not happy, and not eating well, in some cases you can predict whether the pig is sick," said Jackson He, chief executive officer of Yingzi Technology, a small firm based in the southern city of Guangzhou that has introduced its vision of a "future pig farm" with facial and voice recognition technologies. China's biggest tech firms want to pamper pigs, too. Alibaba, the e-commerce giant, and JD.com, its rival, are using cameras to track pigs' faces. Alibaba also uses voice-recognition software to monitor their coughs."

"Researchers involved in a recent study trained an artificial intelligence (AI) model to diagnose type 2 diabetes in patients after six to 10 seconds of listening to their voice. Canadian medical researchers trained the machine-learning AI to recognise 14 vocal differences in the voice of someone with type 2 diabetes compared to someone without diabetes. The auditory features that the AI focussed on included slight changes in pitch and intensity, which human ears cannot distinguish. This was then paired with basic health data gathered by the researchers, such as age, sex, height and weight. Researchers believe that the AI model will drastically lower the cost for people with diabetes to be diagnosed."

"AI-generated voices are extremely convincing and can converse without the obvious repetitions and scripted lines, making a dream tool for fraudsters, marketers and political campaigns. The Federal Communications Commission sees the costs of all this coming and is banning their use in robocalls. "Bad actors are using AI-generated voices in unsolicited robocalls to extort vulnerable family members, imitate celebrities and misinform votes," said FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel in a press release. "State attorneys general will now have new tools to crack down on these scams and ensure the public is protected from fraud and misinformation.""

"Despite Neville describing his use of AI technology as a "modern storytelling technique", critics voiced concerns on social media over the unannounced use of a "deepfake" voice to say sentences that Bourdain never spoke. Among those upset with the use of AI was Bourdain's ex-wife Ottavia Bourdain. She disputed Neville's claims that he had received her blessing to use the artificial technology, tweeting: "I certainly was NOT the one who said Tony would have been cool with that.""

"Train the Deep Learning Ahem Detector with two sets of audio files, "a negative sample with clean voice/sound" (minimum 3 minutes) and "a positive one with 'ahem' sounds concatenated" (minimum 10s) and it will detect "ahems" in any voice sample thereafter."

"Participants used an app on their phones to record 30-second intervals of themselves reading a piece of text, describing a positive experience, then describing a negative experience. Doctors also took recordings from a control group of 25 patients who were either healthy or getting non-heart-related tests. The doctors found 13 different voice characteristics associated with coronary artery disease. Most notably, the biggest differences between heart patients and non-heart patients' voices occurred when they talked about a negative experience."

"The researchers, led by Dr Mark Graham from the university's Oxford Internet Institute, argue that the study shows that "local voices rarely represent and define their own country". Instead, high-income countries have a disproportionately loud voice on the crowd-sourced encyclopedia, so countries that have many Wikipedia editors can "dominate the production of knowledge about smaller countries""

"GCHQ, the UK's spy agency, designed a security protocol for voice-calling called MIKEY-SAKKE and announced that they'll only certify VoIP systems as secure if they use MIKEY-SAKKE, and it's being marketed as "government-grade security." But a close examination of MIKEY-SAKKE reveals some serious deficiencies. The system is designed from the ground up to support "key escrow" -- that is, the ability of third parties to listen in on conversations without the callers knowing about it."

""It's like Photoshop for voice," said Zohaib Ahmed, CEO of Resemble AI, about his company's voice-cloning technology."

"A virtual protest has taken place on China's heavily monitored social media platforms, where netizens took turns to keep a censored video called the Voice of April alive and overwhelm censors."

""What a bunch of malarkey." That's what thousands of New Hampshire voters heard last month when they received a robocall purporting to be from President Biden. The voice on the other end sounded like the president, and the catchphrase was his. But the message that Democrats shouldn't vote in the upcoming primary election didn't make sense. "Your vote makes a difference in November, not this Tuesday," the voice said."

"Microsoft researchers said VALL-E 2 was capable of generating "accurate, natural speech in the exact voice of the original speaker, comparable to human performance," in a paper that appeared June 17 on the pre-print server arXiv. In other words, the new AI voice generator is convincing enough to be mistaken for a real person - at least, according to its creators."

A new Vonage app for the iPhone will be released late because of technical issues.

"This detail may seem trivial, but it goes to the heart of the way in which the spread of digital technologies can amplify and extend social prejudice."

"Joel and Anna have experienced this too, though Joel believes his tech is not inherently misogynistic. "Because I set it up, I know exactly the phrase that needs to be used and Anna doesn't," he explains. "She'll say it slightly wrong, then I say it and to her ear it sounds like I'm saying exactly the same thing in a calmer voice.""

"A 10-year-old girl asked Alexa for a "challenge to do." The voice assistant replied: "Plug in a phone charger about halfway into a wall outlet, then touch a penny to the exposed prongs.""