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Project Voco, a new voice editing technology, raises ethical questions

By Peyton Shepherd

Media outlets have faced mounting discontent from some of their readership concerned about biased reporting, and the continued development of editing software has the potential to fan the “fake news” flames.

In November, computer software company Adobe premiered an add-on to its audio editing program that has the capability to accurately replicate human speech patterns. Project Voco, lauded at the demonstration as the “Photoshop of speech,” is an artificially intelligent voice manipulation software that, after analyzing a 20-minute voice sample, can reproduce any word in the speaker’s voice in a matter of minutes.

Experts are divided on the technology, with some worrying about the ethical implications on fields like journalism that rely heavily on digital evidence.

“It seems that Adobe’s programmers were swept along with the excitement of creating something as innovative as a voice manipulator, and ignored the ethical dilemmas brought up by its potential misuse,” said Eddie Borges Rey, a lecturer in media and technology at the University of Sterling, in an interview with the BBC.

Rey said Voco would be met with the same hesitation as Photoshop was upon its respective launch in 1990. The two programs enable users to substantially alter journalistic source material while ultimately changing the narrative those materials can portray.

Despite the program’s unveiling, Voco is still in development. Adobe has promised safety measures like watermarking detection in the future, and it has yet to be disclosed whether the product will be made commercially available.

“[It] may or may not be released as a product or product feature,” an Adobe spokesperson told the BBC. “No ship date has been announced.”

Even before the development of Voco and other artificial intelligence-based editing software, American media has often faced accusations of misrepresentation due to heavy-handed editing practices in text, audio and video alike.

Most recently, Breitbart editor and alt-right personality Milo Yiannopoulos said he was portrayed in negative light when video surfaced on Monday that showed him stating his apparent support for pedophilic relationships. In a response posted on Facebook, Yiannopoulos claimed the video was “edited deceptively”:

“As to some of the specific claims being made, sometimes things tumble out of your mouth on these long, late-night live-streams [sic], when everyone is spit-balling [sic],, that are incompletely expressed or not what you intended,” Yiannopoulos wrote. “Nonetheless, I’ve reviewed the tapes that appeared last night in their proper full context and I don’t believe they say what is being reported.”

Yiannopoulos is far from the first political figure to point a finger at faulty editing practices in media coverage. However, with the advent of user-friendly editing softwares like Project Voco, Yiannopoulos’ claims, among others, could invite speculation as journalists face increased temptation to cut and crop the perfect story.

Though journalists have multiple sources for both fabricating and altering information at their disposal, many avoid their use in practice.

Andrea Mabry, a journalism instructor at the University of Alabama and freelance photographer, said she refrains from teaching or using Photoshop in journalistic work for anything other than resizing photos and fixing minor technical issues.

“The point of photojournalism is to show what actually happened in the moment, or as close to it as possible,” Mabry said. “To alter that is to alter the truth, and journalists are called to seek the truth.”

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Associate Professor

Department of Journalism and Creative Media at the University of Alabama.

© Chris Roberts 2022