【每天一篇经济学人】Speak easy 容易说（2023年第45期）

文章来源：《经济学人》Jul 22th 2023 期 Culture 栏目 Speak easy 容易说

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Jennifer destefano answered a call from a number she did not recognise. “Mom, I messed up,” her daughter’s voice told her, sobbing. “These bad men have me.” A man proceeded to demand money, or he would drug her daughter and leave her in Mexico. But while she kept him on the phone, friends managed to reach her daughter, only to discover that she was, in fact, free and well on a skiing trip in Arizona. The voice used on the phone was a fake.

詹妮弗·德斯特凡诺接听了一个陌生电话。“妈妈，我搞砸了，”她女儿哭着说，“这些坏人抓了我。” 一名男子接着索要钱财，拿不到钱他就会给她女儿下药，然后把她丢在墨西哥。但当她保持通话的同时，朋友们设法联系上了她的女儿，实际上她女儿人身安全且自由，正在亚利桑那州参加滑雪旅行。电话里的声音是伪造的。

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Ms DeStefano, still shaken, told this story to a US Senate subcommittee hearing on artificial intelligence in June. The dangers that voice-cloning technology pose are only now starting to be uttered aloud. In recent months, most of the attention paid to artificial intelligence (AI) has gone to so-called “large-language models” like ChatGPT, which churn out text. But voice cloning’s implications will also be profound.

德斯特凡诺仍心有余悸，她在今年6月份的美国参议院人工智能小组委员会听证会上讲述了这个故事。人们才刚刚开始公开讨论声音克隆技术的危害。最近几个月，人工智能的关注点主要集中在“大型语言模型”，如可生成文本的ChatGPT。然而，声音克隆也将产生深远影响。

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A brief sample of a voice can be used to train an AI model, which can then speak any given text sounding like that person. Apple is expected to include the feature for iPhones in its new operating system, iOS 17, due to be released in September. It is advertised as helping people who may be in danger of losing their voice, for example to a degenerative disease such as ALS.

可用一个简短的声音样本来训练人工智能模型，然后它就可以用样本人的声音说出任何给定的文本。苹果预计将在 9 月发布新的操作系统 iOS 17，苹果手机中将加入这项功能。据宣传，该功能可以帮助那些可能面临失声危险的人，例如渐冻症患者。

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For those eager to try voice cloning now, ElevenLabs, an AI startup, offers users the chance to create their own clones in minutes. The results are disturbingly accurate. When generating a playback, the system offers a slider that allows users to choose between variability and stability. Select more variability, and the audio will have a lifelike intonation, including pauses and stumbles like “er…” Choose “stability”, and it will come across more like a calm and dispassionate newsreader.

对于那些迫切想尝试语音克隆的人来说，AI初创公司ElevenLabs提供了一个机会，用户在几分钟内即可创建自己的克隆声音。结果惊人地准确。在生成音频回放时，系统提供了一个滑动条，允许用户在变化性和稳定性之间进行选择。选择 "多变"，音频就会有逼真的音调，包括 "呃...... "这样的停顿和结巴。选择“稳定”，声音就会更像一个冷静、平和的新闻播报员。

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Taylor Jones, a linguist and consultant, took a careful look at the quality of ElevenLabs’s clone of his voice in a YouTube video. A lower-tech test, a “conversation” with his own mother, fooled the woman who raised him. (“Don’t you ever do that again,” she warned.)

泰勒·琼斯是一位语言学家兼顾问，他认真研究了ElevenLabs在 YouTube 视频中克隆他声音的质量。在一项技术含量较低的测试中，即与他自己母亲“对话”，他的妈妈被成功糊弄了。（“你可别再这样做了，”她警告说。）

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For several years, customers have been able to identify themselves over the phone to their bank and other companies using their voice. This was a security upgrade, not a danger. Not even a gifted mimic could fool the detection system. But the advent of cloning will force adaptation, for example by including voice as only one of several identification factors (and thus undercutting the convenience), in order to prevent fraud.

多年来，客户一直可以通过电话里自己的声音向他们的银行和其他公司进行身份验证。这是一种安全升级措施，而不是一种危险。即使是天才的模仿者也无法骗过检测系统。但是声音克隆技术的出现将迫使银行等机构做出调整，例如声音仅作为多种身份验证因素之一（因此便利性减弱了），以防诈骗。

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Creative industries could face disruption too. Voice actors’ skills, trained over a lifetime, can be ripped off in a matter of seconds. The Telegraph, a British broadsheet, recently reported on actors who had mistakenly signed away rights to their voices, making it possible to clone them for nothing. New contracts will be needed in future. But some actors may, in fact, find cloning congenial. Val Kilmer, who has lost much of his voice to throat cancer, was delighted to have his voice restored for “Top Gun: Maverick”. Others may be spared heading to the studio for retakes. It is the middling professional, not the superstar, who is most threatened.

创意产业也可能会被颠覆。配音演员毕生训练的技能可以在几秒钟内被剥夺。英国大报《每日电讯报》最近报道了一些演员签署放弃自己声音权利的合同，这是错误之举，使得业界人士可以免费克隆他们的声音。未来将需要新的合同。但事实上，一些演员可能会觉得克隆声音是明智之举。瓦尔·基尔默因喉癌失去了大部分声音，他很高兴能在《壮志凌云：独行侠》中恢复声音。其他人可以不用再去录音室重录了。最受威胁的是中级专业人员，而不是超级明星。

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Another industry that will have to come to grips with the rise of clones is journalism. On-the-sly recordings have long been the stuff of blockbuster scoops. Now who will trust a story based on an audio clip?

新闻界也将不得不面对声音克隆的问题。秘密录音长期以来一直是轰动一时的独家新闻。现在谁还会相信只言片语的音频片段呢？

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Slightly easier to manage might be the false positives: recordings purporting to be someone but which are fakes. Sophisticated forensic techniques could be of use here, proving a clip to be AI, say, in a courtroom. The opposite problem—the false negatives—will arise when public figures deny authentic recordings. Proving that a clip is genuine is hard, perhaps even impossible. Journalists will need to show how they obtained and stored audio files—unless, as so often, they have promised a source anonymity.

稍微容易处理的可能是假正类情况：声称是某人的录音，但实际上是假的。精细的取证技术可以在此处派上用场，例如在法庭上证明一段音频是由人工智能生成的。当公众人物否认真实录音时，就会出现相反的问题——假负类情况。证明一段音频的真实性很难，甚至无法证明。新闻记者需要展示他们获取和存储音频文件的全过程--除非他们使用匿名消息来源。

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During his first presidential run, Mr Trump did more than anyone to popularise the term “fake news”—and that was well before voice cloning, deepfake videos, artificially generated images and the like were widespread. Now, ever more people caught up in wrongdoing will be tempted by the defence, “It wasn’t me.” Many people will have even more reason to believe them.

在特朗普第一次竞选总统期间，他普及了“假新闻”这个术语--而那时候声音克隆、深度伪造视频、人工生成的图像等还没有普及。现在，越来越多的不法分子将会利用“这不是我”狡辩。许多人将有更多理由相信他们。