Emma Watson reads Mein Kampf while Biden announces invasion of Russia in latest AI voice clone abuse

ElevenLabs' Prime Voice AI tool has been dangerously misused to generate the voices of celebrities, including Joe Rogan, James Cameron, Joe Biden, and Emma Watson, spewing racial slurs and making outrageous comments.

ElevenLabs, a startup that aims to have created the most realistic and versatile artificial intelligence (AI) speech software, has found itself in the spotlight for the latest misuse of AI technology. It allows anyone to upload recordings and generate an artificial voice on their basis.

4chan (an anonymous message board) users rushed to try out the software by utilizing the voices of celebrities to read out various statements – from hate speech to propaganda and misinformation.

Motherboard first reported the types of AI-generated recordings released on 4chan. As such, Emma Watson can be heard reading out a section of Hitler’s Mein Kampf. In a separate audio, American political commentator Ben Shapiro makes racist remarks about a member of the US Democratic Party, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez. Sir David Attenborough’s voice was also used in a racist recording.

The Verge went further with its own tests, cloning the voice of President Joe Biden to announce an invasion of Russia and admit that the “pizzagate” conspiracy theory is real.

ElevenLabs acknowledged the abuse of its software, listing out a few ideas to try and mitigate the problem, including the requirement for additional account verification, the copyright for voice verification, and even manual verification of each Cloning Request.

Currently, the software is still freely accessible with no restrictions.

Such misuse of innovative technology is not in the least surprising – it’s enough to look at the emergence of deepfakes or even explore the potential for abuse of quantum computers, which promise great hope for humanity. Setting up appropriate remains a must to navigate our way in the digital world.