FTC says audio cloning is getting better

Rapid progress in voice cloning technology is making it harder to tell real voices from synthetic ones. But while audio deepfakes — which can trick people into giving up sensitive information — are a growing problem, there are some good and legitimate uses for the technology as well, a group of experts told an FTC workshop this week.

“People have been mimicking voices for years, but just in the last few years, the technology has advanced to the point where we can clone voices at scale using a very small audio sample,” said Laura DeMartino, associate director in the FTC’s division of litigation technology and analysis.

At its first public workshop on audio cloning technology, the FTC enlisted experts from academia, government, medicine,...

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