The other day as I was going through the ‘Technology’ sections of the news media, I came across an article about how a Kiev-based, Ukrainian startup used Artificial Intelligence to clone the voice of the original voice-actor of Darth Vader’s character for the upcoming Star-Wars’ series around Obi-Wan Kenobi. The actor’s name is James Earl Jones, who is 91 years-old, and I guess his voice no longer sounds powerfully bionic!
The article went into some details about the process and the outcome, mentioning the clone/fake Darth Vader voice sounds more real than the real one. Aside from noticing the overt ‘war publicity’ for Ukraine through the article, and the technical description, I got thinking:
- With such an evolution, we can no longer trust and allow recordings as evidence in trials. If it is impossible to detect the fakes, then you could not take the risk on using it as a proof, or it suffices for the compromised to claim fake.
Now you combine the voice-clone with video deep-fake, and you will have the future nightmare that none of those evidences could ever constitute the basis of a conviction, at least not in the public setting.
As I was reflecting on this, I remembered the original Mission Impossible episodes from late 60s/early 70s where one of the characters (I think the one depicted by Martin Landau) used masks and voice gadgets to wrongly compromise their targets as traitors or criminals.
If recording evidences cannot be used anymore, what do we do? Then again, before we get there, we may invent other technologies to supply evidence, such as brain-wave analyzers to judge and convict us based on our intentions!!!!
Paris, October 3, 2022,
Zeejay