Voice theft: Chances and risks of digital voice technology

“Voice theft”: Chances and risks of digital voice technology

Contemporary voice processing technology offers novel chances and risks to digital infrastructures. In this project, we will address key issues on digital, cognitive- and neural-perceptual processing of manipulated voices on humans. (Infos aus Projektwebsite)

From a ‘chances’ perspective we will study how digital voice manipulation can be used to enhance voice technology. From a ‘risks’ perspective we will study the fraud potential of manipulated voices in humans and machines. The results of our research will be fundamental in understanding the chances and risks in human-machine voice interaction and in the creation of safe digital voice technology. State-of-the-art acoustic-phonetic voice manipulation algorithms will be used to manipulate and understand the acoustic cues to personality in voice and – using behavioral and functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) techniques – the differences in human perception of natural and manipulated signals will be investigated. Our research will make a significant contribution in understanding the true chances, risks and possible threats of digital voice manipulations on industrial and social digital infrastructures in which voice identity is at stake and in understanding the trust that user have in such digital infrastructure.