--- title: "Facebook’s Creepy New AI Can Replicate Your Friends’ Voices" description: "Meta-formerly-Facebook says its new text-to-speech AI can edit existing audio, speak in six languages, and replicate loved ones' voices." date: "2023-06-21" modified: "2023-06-21" authors: - name: "Maggie Harrison Dupré" job_title: "Senior Staff Writer" link: "https://futurism.com/authors/mharrison" url: "https://futurism.com/the-byte/facebook-ai-replicate-friends-voices" categories: - "Artificial Intelligence" tags: - "ai" - "Meta" - "text-to-speech" - "the digest" --- # Facebook’s Creepy New AI Can Replicate Your Friends’ Voices ![Meta-formerly-Facebook's says its new text-to-speech AI can edit existing audio, speak in six languages, and replicate loved ones' voices.]() *\Image: Getty Images\* ## Call From Mom Meta-formerly-Facebook has unveiled a "breakthrough" new text-to-speech AI that can edit existing audio, speak in six languages, and — in a more unsettling turn — replicate your loved ones' voices. You know, just in case you want to hear from your aunt, but don't actually want to hang out on the phone for an hour. "Today, we're announcing a breakthrough in generative AI for speech," Meta wrote in a [press release](), published late last week. "We've developed Voicebox, a state-of-the-art AI model that can perform speech generation tasks — like editing, sampling and stylizing — that it wasn't specifically trained to do through in-context learning." Basically, all you have to do in order to replicate someone's voice is feed the program an audio clip as short as two seconds long. Voicebox will then "match the audio style," and boom: with little more than a written prompt and the click of a few buttons, you can get an AI-powered replica of your friend or family member's voice — and the ethical and legal implications are palpable. ## Deepfake Friend To be fair, Meta does offer a compelling use case for this specific function of the model, arguing that the tech could "allow visually impaired people to hear written messages from friends in their voices." Fostering accessibility in tech is essential, and we could certainly see this being helpful. Nevertheless, the concept of replicating your bestie's voice is still a bit unsettling, not to mention ripe for abuse. After all, if you can replicate a friend's voice with just a two-second sound clip, you could practically replicate anyone's voice as long as you had the audio. It's a potential lapse in safety that could give way to [phishing scams](), [misinformation](), and even an audio version of [deepfaked porn](). Thankfully, Meta is more than aware of this, and is opting to keep the model and its underlying code closed source for the time being. "There are many exciting use cases for generative speech models, but because of the potential risks of misuse, we are not making the Voicebox model or code publicly available at this time," the company wrote in a [separate research blog](). And that can only be a good thing given the sheer potential for abuse. **More on text-to-speech AI:** [*Startup Shocked When 4Chan Immediately Abuses Its Voice-Cloning AI*]() ## Author At Futurism, I've reported extensively on the rise of AI as a cultural and business force shaping the media industry, and more broadly how those dynamics are changing how we all consume and share information and relate to one another. I'm also fascinated by public health policy and ethics, the role of emerging tech in politics and governance — and the powerful people and forces at those intersections — climate change, and the environment. My investigation on Sports Illustrated's use of AI-generated authors with fictional biographies won a 2024 Mirror Award for "Best Story on Media Coverage of Artificial Intelligence in Journalism and the Media" from Syracuse University's SI Newhouse School, I contributed to Niemen Lab's 2025 Predictions for Journalism series, and I've discussed my work for Futurism during appearances on NPR, CNN, the BBC, the CBC, and more. I grew up in rural Pennsylvania and attended the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where I played Division I field hockey for the Minutewomen as a midfielder. Since then, I've lived in New Orleans, Louisiana and Manhattan, New York. I spend my free time running, reading, perusing archival fashion, and searching for the world’s best negroni. I also have a debonair tuxedo cat, Westley, who's named after "The Princess Bride." ### Author social links [Bluesky]()