A high-profile case involving a physical education teacher and former athletic director of a Baltimore County high school has led to the arrest of an individual for using an AI voice cloning service to frame the school principal. The recording circulated on social media in January, featuring alleged fake audio of Pikesville High School Principal Eric Eiswert making racist and anti-Semitic comments.
It is unclear which AI voice platform was used, but experts told the Baltimore Banner and police that the recording had a “flat tone, unusually clean background sounds and lack of coherent breathing sounds or pauses.” The investigation led to Dazhon Darien, who allegedly used the school’s computers to access OpenAI tools and Microsoft Bing Chat services. He was arrested at the airport on charges including theft (for the problem with school funds), disrupting the operations of a school, retaliation against a witness, and stalking.
The use of AI-powered voice cloning technology has grown in popularity over the past year as services have become better at sounding more human. However, cases of improper or criminal use of these apps and software are also increasing.
In Pakistan, Imran Khan’s political party used ElevenLabs, a popular commercially available text-to-voice generation platform, to replicate his voice during an electoral campaign. In Texas, two companies were linked to a fake robocall pretending to be President Joe Biden telling people not to vote. The Federal Communications Commission banned the use of AI robocalls in February. And lastly, Drake created a song “Heart on My Sleeve” using AI for text-to-speech conversion.
In response to concerns about privacy and potential misuse of this technology, OpenAI decided in March to hold back its AI text-to-speech generation platform Voice Engine for public use. The service requires only a 15-minute audio clip to clone someone’s voice and is currently only available to researchers due to lack of guardrails around it.
US lawmakers have introduced several bills such as No Fakes Act and No AI Fraud Act aimed at preventing tech companies from using an individual’s face, voice or name without their permission. As this case highlights
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