Samsung says users will find a way to clone their voice to reply to calls

AI voice clones are already being implemented in podcasts and video games, but how long will it take before they might be used directly by most of the people? Probably before you’re thinking that, with Samsung today pronounces the function of its mobile assistant Bixby which allows users to clone their voice to reply phone calls. The idea is that if someone calls you but you’ll be able to’t answer aloud, you’ll be able to type the reply and it’ll be read within the simulacrum of your voice.

Here are some caveats: this feature is currently only available in Korean because the Bixby Custom Voice Creator app for a small variety of Samsung phones (latest Galaxy S23, S23+ and S23 Ultra), meaning we weren’t in a position to test it ourselves. Voice quality might be abysmal and response time too slow to be useful. But cloning voices to reply calls is well throughout the scope of current technology, and AI tools are capable of making realistic copies of voices from just a number of minutes of audio.

Answering audio calls via a text interface can be not latest. On Samsung devices, the feature is generally known as Bixby Text Call and was introduced with the corporate’s One UI 5 Android skin. Previously, it was only available in Korean, but now it’s available in English using a generic artificial voice (and only with One UI 5.1 versions). Google offers an analogous service called Connection screen which means that you can answer potential spam calls with an automatic voice. Although Google only means that you can select from an inventory of generic answers as an alternative of typing in custom answers.

It is just not hard to assume that within the near future these functions will develop into more complex and automatic. After all, you’ll be able to easily connect your text-to-speech voice clone to a chatbot like ChatGPT or (in case you’re feeling particularly chaotic) Microsoft Bing. Samsung itself guarantees that user-generated voices can be “compatible with other Samsung apps outside of phone calls” in the long run, though it isn’t clear what which means.

You can ask such a bot to summarize the content of your call or simply waste the spammer’s time in case you feel petty. Tech corporations have long promised that AI assistants will find a way to perform these sorts of administrative tasks on our behalf, and creating your individual voice clone and setting tasks with a chatbot could actually make that supply a reality.

We’ll watch this technology develop and check out to check Bixby’s voice features ourselves each time possible. But while you get a call within the near future, you could have to ask yourself: is that this really the person on the opposite side?