Deepfake voices deceive people – but not the brain
The brain reacts differently to artificially imitated voices than to real ones. This happens even if people do not recognise the so-called deepfake voices as fake, according to a study by the University of Zurich in the journal Communications Biology.
Check out our selection of newsletters. Subscribe here.
Deepfake technologies can imitate a person’s unique voice profile very accurately. This is used, for example, for fraud attempts on the telephone, the university wrote in a press release on Wednesday.
For the study, the researchers recorded the voices of four male speakers and converted them into deepfake voices using computer algorithms. Twenty-five test subjects had to decide whether two voices they heard were identical or whether one of them was a deepfake voice.
In two-thirds of cases, the deepfake identities were correctly assigned. “This illustrates that although actual deepfake voices do not perfectly mimic identity, they have the potential to deceive people’s perceptions,” first author Claudia Roswandowitz was quoted as saying in the press release.
Brain areas react differently
However, the brains of the test subjects showed a different picture: the so-called nucleus accumbens, a component of the brain’s reward system, was much more active when both voices shown to the test subjects were natural voices. In contrast, the auditory cortex, which is responsible for analysing sounds, was more active when one of the two voices was a deepfake voice.
Roswandowitz concluded that humans can therefore only be partially deceived by deepfakes.
Translated from German by DeepL/ts
This news story has been written and carefully fact-checked by an external editorial team. At SWI swissinfo.ch we select the most relevant news for an international audience and use automatic translation tools such as DeepL to translate it into English. Providing you with automatically translated news gives us the time to write more in-depth articles.
If you want to know more about how we work, have a look here, and if you have feedback on this news story please write to english@swissinfo.ch.
External Content
Your subscription could not be saved. Please try again.
Almost finished… We need to confirm your email address. To complete the subscription process, please click the link in the email we just sent you.
More
Why Switzerland is among the ten fastest-warming countries in the world
More
In Switzerland four out of ten people have a migrant background – who are they?
More
Suicides in Switzerland quadruple among older people
More
French gangs target luxury cars in Switzerland
More
Renewed controversy in Switzerland over US fighter jets – explained
In compliance with the JTI standards
More: SWI swissinfo.ch certified by the Journalism Trust Initiative
You can find an overview of ongoing debates with our journalists here . Please join us!
If you want to start a conversation about a topic raised in this article or want to report factual errors, email us at english@swissinfo.ch.