Another reason to worry about artificial intelligence - your voice can be stolen
SOMERVILLE - Just as President Biden is calling for safeguards on artificial intelligence, there are new security concerns about AI and your own voice.
Your voice can be stolen and used by artificial intelligence to sound just like you and it only takes seconds.
Lawmakers and industry leaders say when it comes to AI, it's being introduced to society so rapidly, with voice and text, that the government needs to step in and protect people. But those in the industry said there are some benefits.
"Honestly, this technology, it's incredibly sophisticated," said Mike Pappas, the CEO of Modulate AI in Somerville. "It's incredibly cool in some respects to see what it's doing, there are definitely risks that are coming out."
MIT computer science professor Aleksander Madry testified before Congress, stressing the need for the government to protect Americans' voices, much like they protect one's name, image, and likeness.
"I think this loss of credibility of recording is something that our society is completely unprepared for," said Madry.
Madry is worried about how voice AI can be used to con others, especially the elderly.
"Calling some of their close ones, asking for money or trying to scam them into to accepting some offers. If we believe we are talking to a friend, all of our guards go down," said Madry. "You can deploy this at-scale."
But there are positives to the technology as well. At Modulate AI, they've created a program to protect female gamers online.
"A voice changer to allow people to transform how they sound so that if they were worried about being bullied or harassed for their age, their gender, their ethnicity, they would have more control over how they express themselves," said Pappas.
They're creating a safeguard to flag hate speech, child predators, and terror groups from using AI for the wrong reasons. But users have some responsibility too.
"One of the things we've learned in the past is when people see images, they learned maybe that's photoshopped. Maybe I shouldn't trust that right out the gate," said Pappas.
Much like we did with the internet and social media, we are now learning how to live with artificial intelligence.