“Your voice is your identity. It reveals everything about who you are, how you feel and what you stand for.” – Erin Brockovich
Each voice has a unique stamp. This is why we can recognise someone’s voice over the phone, even if they are tired or well-rested, sad or cheerful, sick or healthy. The uniqueness of the vocal timbre is due to the different anatomical conformation of the organs and muscles that participate in the formation of the voice, namely the vocal cords, lungs, throat, mouth, tongue, resonant cavities, sinuses, muscles of the chest, neck, head and so on. All of these have dimensions and shapes that differ from person to person. As a result, no two voices are the same in the 108 billion people who have lived to date [1].
Everyone’s voice may be unique but it can still be imitated by those with advanced verbal skills. Actors can usually do this with great ease. Thanks to such abilities, they can assume any identity in phone calls and fool everyone. The most famous voice imitations were those of a Russian actor who tricked over the phone both the President of Poland and the Prime Ministers of Germany and the UK into believing that he had spoken to other foreign dignitaries. The President of Poland (Andrzej Duda) was tricked by the Russian actor for the first time in 2020 and the second time in 2022, convinced he was on the phone with the President of France, Emanuel Macron [2]. The same Russian actor then tricked Boris Johnson and Angela Merkel into thinking they were on the phone with former Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko [3]. These discussions were made public and those dupes admitting their powerlessness.
However, the three dignitaries should not be blamed too much given that the imitations were so good that they could have fooled anyone. However, such hoaxes can be immediately detected by voice biometrics software packages. These packages utilize AI algorithms and audio databases to verify people’s identity in real-time based on voice timbre. If the President of Poland, the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and the Prime Minister of Germany had had such software installed on their mobile phones, they would not have been fooled by the Russian actor [4]. Who knows how many state secrets the Russian actor has obtained from these politicians and perhaps from others?
Memo
Acknowledgment: This text was taken from the book The Power of Voice, with the consent of the author Eduard Dan Franti. The Power of Voice can be obtained from Memobooks, Apple Books, or Amazon.
Bibliography
[1] T. Kaneda and C. Haub, “How many people have ever lived,” *Population Reference Bureau*, 2022.
[2] “Comedianții ruși i-au făcut o farsă telefonică președintelui reales al Poloniei,” 12 July 2020. [Online]. Available: https://www.hotnews.ro/stiri-international-24175767-andrzej-duda-farsa-telefonica-comedianti-rusi.htm. [Accessed 12 May 2023].
[3] “Angela Merkel a fost păcălită de doi farsori ruși care au convins-o că vorbește cu un fost președinte al Ucrainei,” 12 February 2023. [Online]. Available: https://www.digi24.ro/stiri/externe/angela-merkel-a-fost-pacalita-de-doi-farsori-prorusi-care-au-convins-o-ca-vorbeste-cu-un-fost-presedinte-al-ucrainei-2259613. [Accessed 12 May 2023].
[4] “Types of Speaker Recognition Software: Text Dependent and Text Independent,” 10 May 2023. [Online]. Available: https://www.idrnd.ai/text-independent-voice-verification. [Accessed 12 May 2023].
