In Terminator 2, the evil, morphing T1000 imitates the voices of John Connor’s foster parents, in order to lure the snot-nosed future leader of humanity back home… and kill him. Luckily, Ahnold the good Terminator does some fancy mimickry of his own — aping John’s early-teen whine, and tricking the robotic trickster right back.
The Air Force is hoping to pull off the same stunt, one day. The flyboys are looking for a few good researchers “to develop and test voice transformation algorithms” so airmen can “disguise their true identity or… make their voice sound like another individual.“
Computer scientists have gotten better and better at syntheisizng speech that sounds almost human. But “while voice transformation [has] been around for a while, the ability to transform a persons voice to a target voice is not yet solved,” the Air Force observes. So the program will start by playing with the “speaking rate, stress, and intonation” to “provide broad parameters for modeling a persons voice. A finer grain analysis of a persons voice may also be performed by de-convolving an audio signal into its glottal pulse and vocal tract information.“
If that all works as planned, the idea is to move on to “experiments with human listeners… to assess the validity and potential use of voice transformation techniques.” And if that goes well, too, then it’s on to “employ[ing] voice transformation software… for use in a deception campaign against hostile forces.“
There could also be commercial uses, the Air Force notes. In a case of art-imitating-life-imitating-art, the military research might be used “in the gaming industry and animated films for creating and modify voices, for voice dubbing of foreign films, and for creating/reducing a persons accent.“
Maybe the work will be done by the time Ahnold suits up for Terminator 5.
UPDATE 5:10 PM: Defense Tech pal Xeni Jardin just test-drove the latest translator tech.
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Air Force Wants Terminator Tongues
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hmmmmm.….brings to mind something about voice of Arthur Godfrey being used as secure communications for SAC, since it couldn’t be imitated. apocryphal? fiction? interesting certainly.
Why does the Air Force want this? What are the potential applications?
maybe something will be build for skype…
The voice-changing trick was used earlier in the first Terminator, where it uses the voice of a police officer on the radio and Sarah Connors’ mother on the phone.
Essential Trivia: Arnie himself only has 16 lines in the entire movie.
i can see why they would want to use that. It certainly would have helped when I was deployed many times behind enemy lines with my spec ops team. However, in this search for deceptive strategies and plans they should actually focus on the secret weapons division and attempt to make our soldiers less vulnerable to bullets and more agile and experienced soldiers so that we do not encounter more casualties that are unnecessary.
yea i wish i could find out about this before they started testing it caus ethere soem things i do now about voice transformation so yea i wish i could put in my two cents on this cause i mimic ppl all the time
The NSA and CIA have had access to this for many years. It’s nothing new, just more public.
I agree with richardishere’s comment Nov 2006. They have been able to do this for years, ever since the developed implants which they first used on domestic population in the US in the 70’s. Now they do not need implants, they use electromagnetic fields to target domestic population from a distance, whoever they want to do this to and there is only a law against it in Michigan, Russia and maybe in one or two more places but I don’t know of any more places where these technologies are banned. This type of targeting people from a distance is classed as the perfect crime, all the proof is at the criminals end and covered up by corporations who are known to be doing this. The home office have a policy on it in the UK but noone has ever been freed yet and as far as I know it is still up to the victim to get the proof and it should be the police to collect proof! They do try in other cases, not pin it all on the victim to have proof. I keep hoping this will change in the UK and that their policy will come into operation.