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Microsoft plans to let Teams substance abuser clone their voices so they can have their speech sound - alikes speak to others in meetings in different language .
At Microsoft Ignite 2024 on Tuesday , the troupe revealed Interpreter in Teams , a tool for Microsoft Teams that deliver “ real - clip , language - to - spoken language ” interpretation capableness . Starting in early 2025 , people using Teams for coming together will be capable to use Interpreter to simulate their vocalisation in up to nine languages : English , French , German , Italian , Nipponese , Korean , Portuguese , Mandarin Chinese , and Spanish .
“ Imagine being able to go just like you in a different language , ” Microsoft CMO Jared Spataro wrote in ablog postshared with TechCrunch . “ The Interpreter factor in Teams provides existent - metre delivery - to - spoken communication translation during meetings , and you may opt to have it assume your speaking voice for a more personal and engaging experience . ”
“ Interpreter is design to reduplicate the loudspeaker system ’s substance as faithfully as potential without tot supposition or extraneous info , ” a Microsoft interpreter told TechCrunch . “ Voice pretence can only be enabled when user leave consent via a notification during the group meeting or by enable ‘ Voice simulation consent ’ in scene . ”
A number of firms have developed technical school to digitally mimic part that sound reasonably natural . Meta recentlysaidthat it ’s fly a displacement puppet that can automatically transform voices in Instagram Reels , while ElevenLabs offer a full-bodied platform for multilingual speech contemporaries .
AI translation tend to beless lexically richthan those from human interpreters , and AI translator often struggle to accurately convey colloquialisms , analogies and ethnical nuances . Yet , the toll savings are attractive enough to make the trade - off deserving it for some . concord toMarkets and Markets , the sphere for natural language processing engineering , including translation technologies , could be worth $ 35.1 billion by 2026 .
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AI clone also pose security challenges , however .
Deepfakes havespread like wildfireacross social medium , hold it harder to distinguish truth from disinformation . So far this year , deepfakes featuringPresident Joe Biden , Taylor Swift , andVice President Kamala Harrishave squeeze up millions of views and reshares . Deepfakes have also been used to target mortal , for example byimpersonating eff one . Losses linked to impersonation scams topped $ 1 billion last year , perthe FTC .
Just this yr , a team of cybercriminalsreportedlystaged a Teams meeting with a fellowship ’s blow - level staff that was so convincing that the target companionship wire $ 25 million to the criminals .
In part due to the endangerment ( and optic ) , OpenAI earlier this yr decided against releasing its voice cloning tech , Voice Engine .
From what ’s been revealed so far , Interpreter in Teams is a comparatively minute diligence of voice cloning . Still , that does n’t mean the creature will be good from abuse . One can imagine a bad actor eat Interpreter a misleading recording — for example , someone asking for bank account info — to get a version in the nomenclature of their target .
Hopefully , we ’ll get a good idea of the safeguards Microsoft will supply around Interpreter in the months to come .
