Using software to clone people's voices can be creepy and a security hazard. But Samsung has decided to bring voice-cloning technology to consumers through its virtual assistant Bixby.
The smartphone vendor is adding the voice-cloning capability to Bixby’s text-to-call feature, which can be handy for times when you’re in a noisy area. Through the feature, an incoming voice call will be converted to text. You can then type in your response and Bixby will read out your text reply to the caller on the other end.
Already available for English users, Bixby’s text-to-call feature currently has several default artificial voices. But now the company wants to let users personalize the capability by lending their own voice.
“Using the new Bixby Custom Voice Creator, users can record different sentences for Bixby to analyze and create an AI generated copy of their voice and tone,” Samsung says.
The security risk occurs if the technology is used to clone someone’s voice without their knowledge. But in this case, Samsung seems to be designing the feature only for use by the phone’s owner. In addition, the company’s text-to-call feature will notify voice callers that they’re communicating with Bixby and not an actual person.
In the announcement, the smartphone vendor added: “When Samsung first launched Bixby as a voice assistant, it was part of a vision to create a human-to-machine interface that makes life easier and can advance over time with Samsung Galaxy innovation.”
For now, the voice-cloning capability is only available for Korean users on the newly released Samsung Galaxy S23 smartphones. When it’ll arrive for other markets remains unclear. In the meantime, a growing number of startups are already offering voice-cloning technologies to customers, which has resulted in some misuse.