Baltimore coach accused of using AI voice cloning to try to get a high school principal fired

1 week ago

A erstwhile diversion head of a Baltimore precocious schoolhouse has been arrested and charged with using an AI sound cloning work to framework nan school’s principal.

The Baltimore Banner reports that Baltimore constabulary judge a purported signaling of Pikesville High School main Eric Eiswert making racist and antisemitic comments was faked. Experts told The Baltimore Banner and Baltimore constabulary that nan recording, which circulated done societal media successful January and concisely resulted successful Eiswert’s suspension, has a “flat tone, unusually cleanable inheritance sounds, and deficiency of accordant breathing sounds aliases pauses.”

Baltimore constabulary traced nan signaling to Dazhon Darien, a erstwhile diversion head astatine nan schoolhouse whose sanction was besides mentioned successful nan audio clip. He allegedly accessed schoolhouse computers to hunt for “OpenAI tools.” It is not clear what AI sound level Darien allegedly used.

Over nan past year, interest successful AI-powered sound cloning exertion has grown arsenic nan services get amended astatine sounding much human. But these apps person besides gotten group into basking water. The governmental statement of Imran Khan, the jailed erstwhile premier curate of Pakistan, utilized ElevenLabs, a celebrated commercially disposable text-to-voice procreation platform, to replicate his sound during nan campaign. Two Texas companies were linked to a fake robocall pretending to beryllium President Joe Biden telling group not to vote. The Federal Communications Commission banned nan usage of AI robocalls successful February. And of course, the clone Drake utilized AI to create nan opus “Heart connected My Sleeve.”

In this fraught environment, OpenAI decided successful March to withhold its AI text-to-voice procreation platform, Voice Engine, from nationalist use. The service, which only requires a 15-minute audio clip to clone someone’s voice, is only disposable to a constricted number of researchers owed to nan deficiency of guardrails astir nan technology.

US lawmakers person filed, but not yet passed, respective bills for illustration the No Fakes Act and the No AI Fraud Act that activity to forestall exertion companies from utilizing an individual’s face, voice, aliases sanction without their permission.