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Adobe Is Working On 'Photoshop For Audio' That Will Let You Add Words Someone Never Said (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: Adobe is working on a new piece of software that would act like a Photoshop for audio, according to Adobe developer Zeyu Jin, who spoke at the Adobe MAX conference in San Diego, California today. The software is codenamed Project VoCo, and it's not clear at this time when it will materialize as a commercial product. The standout feature, however, is the ability to add words not originally found in the audio file. Like Photoshop, Project VoCo is designed to be a state-of-the-art audio editing application. Beyond your standard speech editing and noise cancellation features, Project VoCo can also apparently generate new words using a speaker's recorded voice. Essentially, the software can understand the makeup of a person's voice and replicate it, so long as there's about 20 minutes of recorded speech. In Jin's demo, the developer showcased how Project VoCo let him add a word to a sentence in a near-perfect replication of the speaker, according to Creative Bloq. So similar to how Photoshop ushered in a new era of editing and image creation, this tool could transform how audio engineers work with sound, polish clips, and clean up recordings and podcasts. "When recording voiceovers, dialog, and narration, people would often like to change or insert a word or a few words due to either a mistake they made or simply because they would like to change part of the narrative," reads an official Adobe statement. "We have developed a technology called Project VoCo in which you can simply type in the word or words that you would like to change or insert into the voiceover. The algorithm does the rest and makes it sound like the original speaker said those words."
When recording voiceovers, dialog, and narration, people would often like to change or insert a word or a few words due to either a mistake they made or simply because they would like to change part of the narrative...
When recording suspects, police would often like change or insert a word or a few words in order to manufacture evidence by changing part of the narrative.
FTFY
OTOH, if it's really good enough to be undetectable, it might cause a lot of legitimate and unaltered recordings to be thrown out of court on the grounds of reasonable doubt.
'The Economy' is a giant Ponzi scheme whose most pitiable suckers are the youngest among us and the yet-unborn.
Difference being that so far doing such tampering requires more complex equipment used by big organisations, thus when a recording appears to be genuine it's hard to claim it's been tampered with. After such tool becomes popular, anything can be suspected to be tampered with.
Slashdot, fix the reply notifications... You won't get away with it...
I have perfect name for this future product - Adobe Trump. This way when you use it to make people say awful things you are trumping them.
Yeah. Now all those photosnarks that have a picture of a politician saying something they didn't say will have audio clips attached.
We really are moving to a truth-free society.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
Sadly, this means likely even more revisionist history coming our way.
This is a tool they NEVER thought of in 1984....no need for double speak and re-writing the books, just change what people say....
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
It's fine for Trump though. You'll always be able to spot the fake Trump stuff because in those, he'll use a complete sentence and finish the sentence without blurting out something about ISIS or getting distracted by how angry he is at Rosie O'Donnell in the middle of it.
I did this sort of thing for a class project with Audacity. The person I was working with constantly flubbed their lines, so I had to stitch their lines together using things they didn't screw up until I had completed lines. It's really not hard, this just automates the process.
"...So similar to how Photoshop ushered in a new era of editing and image creation, this tool could transform how audio engineers work with sound, polish clips, and clean up recordings and podcasts."
Enough with this "innocent" sales bullshit. I am far more concerned about how this tool can and will be used against me, in a court of law, forcing me to hire enough expertise to defend against shit I never said.
The average citizen can't even remotely afford a good legal defense these days. This is going to make that even more difficult by having to hire appropriate audio experts to analyze audio recordings to determine if they've been manipulated or not.
And no, this isn't like Photoshop, where often the only tool that is necessary to validate manipulation is the human eye and common sense (yeah, I'm talking to you magazine editors, who still feel the need to digitally alter some of the most naturally beautiful humans on the planet.)
Yes, what a service indeed. Now we finally will have the ability to set people up like in the movie Running Man.
voice authentication systems to be bypassed with ease now.
Can it add subliminal suggestive messages too? Of course, I'm being facetious but when, not if, this technology is misused, wouldn't it be a good idea to embed subliminal audio watermarking so that juries and the media will know that the audio is faked?
Hollywood's asking for it. They'll start making sure their contracts regarding perpetual use of likeness of actors can be used to leave actors out of payroll entirely on the next animated film. Especially low-budget direct to video sequels.
Sequels.
Especially low-budget / direct-to-video. The characters are established, so you only need to sell them on its existence. No need to use the actor's name. The actor signed away their "likeness" for promotion of the original movie. One could always argue that the sequel is "promotion" for sales of the original movie on DVD/Blu-Ray.
The audio from Neil Armstrong can finally be corrected.
I recently saw a doctored video clip on FB (well, obviously doctored to anyone with a minimal amount of critical thinking) that purported to show Obama at public forum admitting he was born in Kenya; but you could tell that certain key words were pasted in from other speeches, and when those strings of words were said, the camera view suddenly cut to a long shot so you couldn't see his mouth; and yet there were people swearing in the comments that it was proof, "there he is saying it". I don't even like Obama but bullshit is bullshit.
Look back up at my post, now look back down, you're on the Internet. Now look back up. I'm a signature.
A giant leap backwards for forensics
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”