Imagine that you are sitting in a quiet evening, and suddenly your phone rings. Unfortunately numbers appear, and you respond with a reservation: “Hello?” A confident voice comes to you, but there is a strange thing: “Hello, how are you?” Gently apologize and close the line, believing that it is a wrong number. Then you will soon hear a ring again. You respond with caution, so with the sound on the other side, he talks to you, saying: “Why did you close the line? I am, don’t you get to know your voice? ” The moment of silence is surprised. How do you hear your voice outside the framework of yourself? Is this a scientific imagination scene or a reality that has already stormed our lives?
In fact, this imagination is no longer far from us. The technique of “Treating the Witness of the sound” is able to cloning human sounds with amazing accuracy, including your voice personally, and from a short recording that does not exceed a few seconds. This technique is based on nerve networks that train on millions of acoustic samples for humans, so that it can “install” the sound in a very natural way, as if a real person pronounces words.
Perhaps you are surprised if you know that this technique overlooks you in many aspects of your digital life. Vocal aid such as “Siri” and “Alexa” are our daily friends, who work behind complex algorithms that give them that human warmth. In the world of audio books, artificial sounds are no longer merely robots that lack a sense, but rather have become the texts smoothly and an expression comparable to man. As for people who face reading difficulties, they find in this technique their way, as it helps them convert the text into clear and flexible words.
But what about using this technology in Bahrain? Huge opportunities; The educational authorities can use them to produce audio materials in the Bahraini dialect, allowing students better to understand the curricula and enrich the linguistic outcome. Even in the tourism sector, smart audio evidence can be activated in historical sites, such as Bahrain Castle, to provide information in a vital and attractive manner. We may go further, so we imagine the revival of the voices of historical Bahraini personalities, in a narration that integrates originality with innovation to document our heritage.
But as each technique has a bright face, there is a dark side. Voice crimes and fraud using cloned sounds have become a real threat, as someone can imitate your voice to contact your family or friends and order sensitive information or money. Therefore, it is necessary to have legislation that guarantees privacy protection and regulates the use of this technology with wisdom and responsibility.
In conclusion, it seems that the future holds a world in which our voice may speak without our permission. Question: Are we ready to hear ourselves in a call that we did not make or in a video that we did not record? Technology advances tremendously, and the imagination turns into reality day by day. Do we welcome this “cloned voice” and benefit from it? Or do we fear that it turns into a weapon in the hands of the tampering? The decision in the end is in our hands.
