Skip to main content
Image

Event Description

On January 28, 2020, staff of the Federal Trade Commission examined voice cloning technologies that enable users to make near-perfect reproductions of a real person’s voice. Advances in artificial intelligence and text-to-speech (TTS) synthesis have allowed researchers to create a near-perfect voice clone with less than a five second recording of a person’s voice.

Although there are a number of promising uses for this technology (for example, editing the work of voice actors and enabling people with tracheotomies and other conditions to use TTS systems using voices derived from their previously-recorded audio samples), it also has the potential to cause substantial harm when used maliciously. For instance, numerous consumers already fall prey to “grandparent scams” (where an elderly person receives a phone call supposedly from a grandchild in distress who needs cash) and phishing scams (where an employee is contacted by a superior and directed to immediately wire funds to a vendor). Voice cloning may make it harder for consumers to identify these sorts of social engineering scams.

The workshop examined:

  • Speech synthesis using the voice of an actual person.
  • Development and deployment of voice cloning technologies, from healthcare and consumer-oriented applications (customer service, entertainment, etc.) to fraudulent schemes.
  • Ethical concerns related to the use of cloned voices.

A BCP staff artist’s representation of You Don't Say: An FTC Workshop on Voice Cloning TechnologiesA BCP staff artist’s representation of You Don’t Say

FTC Privacy Policy

Under the Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”) or other laws, we may be required to disclose to outside organizations the information you provide when you pre-register for events that require registration. The Commission will consider all timely and responsive public comments, whether filed in paper or electronic form, and as a matter of discretion, we make every effort to remove home contact information for individuals from the public comments before posting them on the FTC website.

The FTC Act and other laws we administer permit the collection of your pre-registration contact information and the comments you file to consider and use in this proceeding as appropriate. For additional information, including routine uses permitted by the Privacy Act, see the Commission’s Privacy Act system for public records and comprehensive privacy policy.

This event will be open to the public and may be photographed, videotaped, webcast, or otherwise recorded.  By participating in this event, you are agreeing that your image — and anything you say or submit — may be posted indefinitely at ftc.gov or on one of the Commission's publicly available social media sites.