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

Image: The Verge

A erstwhile diversion manager of a Baltimore precocious schoolhouse has been arrested and charged with using an AI dependable cloning work to framework the 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 the 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 oregon pauses.”

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

Over the past year, interest successful AI-powered dependable cloning exertion has grown arsenic the services get amended astatine sounding much human. But these apps person besides gotten radical into blistery water. The governmental enactment of Imran Khan, the jailed erstwhile premier curate of Pakistan, utilized ElevenLabs, a fashionable commercially disposable text-to-voice procreation platform, to replicate his dependable during the campaign. Two Texas companies were linked to a fake robocall pretending to beryllium President Joe Biden telling radical not to vote. The Federal Communications Commission banned the usage of AI robocalls successful February. And of course, the fake Drake utilized AI to make the 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 lone requires a 15-minute audio clip to clone someone’s voice, is lone disposable to a constricted fig of researchers owed to the deficiency of guardrails astir the technology.

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