“My voice was cloned with AI”: when technology blurs the line between fact and fiction

Today, it's possible to create a voice clone in seconds, capable of speaking for you with astonishing accuracy. Anthony Morel tested this technology on set: it only takes a few seconds of recording to obtain a near-perfect reproduction of his voice.

“As you can see, I never said those words… It’s my voice clone speaking for me,” explains Anthony Morel. The journalist called on a French startup, Silencesilence.ai , to generate a digital double of his voice.

The principle is simple: you provide a short sound clip, sometimes ten seconds is enough. Artificial intelligence analyzes the timbre, spectrum, and intonation to create a voiceprint. Then, you simply type a text on your computer or smartphone: the cloned voice reads it instantly.

Solutions like Heygen, ElevenLabs, and Chatterbox already allow the general public to test this technology. The rendering sometimes remains a little robotic, particularly when reproducing emotions or sarcasm, but progress is dazzling.

While the demonstration may seem laughable, the potential is immense. “The challenge is above all to give a voice back to those who have lost it,” says Anthony Morel. More than 500 million people worldwide suffer from a voice disorder linked to a neurological disease or aphonia. Thanks to a sound sample, it becomes possible to restore their voice, at least via a keyboard—before, perhaps, controlling it directly by thought using headsets or brain implants.

The applications don't stop there:

• audiobooks read in the voice of a parent or famous actor,
• lessons instantly translated into all languages ​​with the teacher's voice,
• historical figures who “come back to life” in a museum or amusement park,
• personalized video games where the hero speaks with your own voice.

However, this innovation poses serious security concerns. “Imagine your grandparents receiving a call from their grandson asking for money… The voice is perfect, they recognize the timbre immediately,” illustrates Anthony Morel.

These scams, already known as "CEO scams" in businesses, are becoming much harder to detect. In this type of fraud, a scammer imitates a boss's voice to request an urgent transfer from an employee.

Another risk: data security. An American journalist cloned his voice to… access his own bank account, protected by voice identification. This raises fears of a future where the line between truth and falsehood will become increasingly blurred.

Experts agree: given the proliferation of these voice clones, it will be necessary to develop tools capable of automatically detecting whether a voice has been generated by AI. In the meantime, vigilance remains essential: never rely solely on the voice of an interlocutor.