January 20, 2025
As artificial intelligence is getting better with each passing day, it is supercharging audio deepfakes and causing robocall scams, financial frauds, voice cloning, and more.
This technology is readily available online; anyone can make a deepfake audio in just a few dollars.
However, there are some ways to detect AI-generated voices. This article will explain how to detect AI voices with and without tools.
Are you ready? Let’s get into it!
While AI voice cloning technology has become more sophisticated in the past few years, it is not perfect.
There are some indicators that can be used to spot AI-generated voices, and one such indicator is unnatural pauses and speech patterns.
Real people take a breath between words while talking, which creates natural pauses in speech.
AI-generated voices lack these natural pauses and often space out each word evenly, making the speech unnaturally smooth.
Deepfake audio is generated by training an NLP model on sample audio recordings of a person’s speech that is intended to mimic.
Though AI voices closely resemble the actual person’s voice, they can struggle with unique words that aren’t present in the sample recordings.
So strange pronunciations, stumbling over words, and unnatural pauses could indicate that you’re listening to a deepfake AI voice.
Another way to detect AI voice is sound wave inspection, which you can do using a sound editor like AudioMass.
All you need to do is open the audio recording in this tool and inspect the appearance of sound waves.
If sound waves are similar to each other and likely to be clear, then it is an AI-generated voice.
This is because audio recordings created by a person are varied and sound more natural, whereas AI-generated sound generation involves creating uniform sound patterns.
Though advanced AI algorithms may capture emotional nuances while replicating human voices, it is difficult to get them right in AI voice.
People express their opinions and feelings when they talk to each other, and they convey their thoughts and emotions through emotional cues, numerous small yet significant changes to their speech, and shifts in tone.
So, if you listen to an audio where the phrases don’t align with the emotional delivery, the voice sounds flat, and there’s a slight upward lilt at the end of sentences, there’s a high chance you’re listening to an AI-generated voice.
You can spot AI-generated voices without using paid and free AI voice detectors.
Recording crisp and clean audio is not easy to record unless you use professional recording equipment.
If the audio has odd background noises like crackling or static noises and sounds overly consistent, it is likely a deepfake voice.
This is because a real person’s voice has subtle inconsistencies, such as variations in vocal tone and pitch and a natural background ambiance.
These natural variances are not found in AI voices, making them overly consistent and sound too perfect.
There are various methods to check if audio is AI-generated, including acoustic sensing to analyze sound wave patterns, artifact detection to look for AI manipulation signs, and machine learning to detect AI-generated deepfakes, among others.
Metadata analysis is another method to detect whether the audio is AI-generated by examining hidden file information.
All you need to do is check the audio file’s metadata. If there are any mentions of AI or any AI voice generator tool, then the audio file is AI-generated.
With methods and techniques, there are many AI sound recognition online tools in the market that you can use to detect AI-generated voices.
PlayHT Voice Classifier, AI or Not, ElevenLabs AI Speech Classifier, AI Voice Detector, and Pindrop Security are some famous AI sound detectors.
Some AI detection tools, such as Pindrop Security work with business use, while others are available for individual use.
These tools leverage neural networks, machine learning, and acoustic analysis to distinguish whether the audio is real or AI-generated after examining audio samples.
Although numerous tools and products have emerged to detect AI-generated audio, experts don’t see these tools as reliable, as they are inherently limited.
These tools are no silver bullet for detecting whether the audio they hear is AI-generated or from a real person. Moreover, they don’t provide a foolproof way to reliably and quickly determine if an audio recording is AI-generated.
Just as generative AI works by training algorithms on real and existing data to produce realistic audio or other media.
Most AI voice detectors are trained to recognize existing deepfake algorithms, which puts them a step behind newer innovations.
Machine learning excels at recognizing things it’s seen before but struggles with reasoning about things it has never seen.
So, it is difficult to assess the effectiveness of these tools, as they may fail to distinguish between AI-generated voice and real speech, but the available options are still better than nothing.
Remember not to rely on a single tool to check if an audio recording is synthetic. Instead, use multiple AI-voice detection tools to cross-check the results.
If you need recommendations for the best AI voice changers, read our complete guides on the top 5 best AI voice changers!
Artificial intelligence has made it easy to produce convincing audio recordings of a person’s speech, and deepfake audio generation technology is getting better and becoming widely available online.
Researchers are developing methods and tools to detect voice clones. In addition, a few telltale signs help you spot deepfakes and understand how to detect AI voices more effectively.
AI detection tools use technologies such as neural networks, acoustic signals analysis, and machine learning. Many experts consider detection methods unreliable, as these tools provide results as probabilities and do not offer results marked as inconclusive.
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