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People are really bad at spotting AI-generated deepfake voices

Tests show that when people hear recordings of real voices and AI-created ones, they mostly fail to spot the fakes – raising concerns about scams involving counterfeit voices

By Alex Wilkins

15 April 2025

It is hard to distinguish real voices from AI-generated ones

Credit: NVARTS/Alamy

People can no longer reliably tell AI and human voices apart, except in examples of conversational-style speech or with familiar voices, such as those of friends or family.

Reproducing human voices using artificial intelligence has long been a research goal, for example to help people who lose the ability to speak, but until recently, people have mostly been able to recognise an AI-generated voice. In 2023, researchers found that English and Mandarin speakers could differentiate between real and deepfake voices about 70 per cent of the time.

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