Everyone I spoke with was not pessimistic. Many developers work on guarantees alongside technology itself.
A startup founder in Montreal showed me its watermark system – an inaudible acoustic signature integrated into all the synthetic audio they generate, detectable by specialized but imperceptible software for human ears.
“It’s a arms race,” she said. “But we are committed to constituting the basics of this technology.”
Most experts agreed on basic ethical directives:
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Always get explicit consent before cloning someone’s voice
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Be transparent with the public when AI voices are used
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Implement robust authentication for sensitive vocal applications
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Develop and standardize the watermark for all synthetic audio
The most pragmatic view came from a veteran radio producer who adopted technology. “Listen, each communication medium in history has faced the same cycle,” he told me. “First, he is faithfully reliable, then he is manipulated, then we develop new forms of verification, and life continues. Photography, radio, television, digital images – the voice is right next.”
Maybe he’s right. Maybe we will adapt. But as a person who experienced the strange feeling of hearing my own voice cloned – saying that I never said with intonations that seemed only to mine – I cannot shake the feeling that we cross a vocal synthetic threshold which deserves more prudence than we give it.
The technology itself does not disappear. The real question is whether we will develop ethical frameworks, legal structures and verification systems necessary for a world where “hearing is to believe” no longer applies.
