OpenAI debuts Voice Engine, however owing to safety concerns, it won't be made available to the public just yet.

OpenAI, the company that created ChatGPT, is venturing into the voice assistant market and showcasing cutting-edge speech-cloning technology, though it claims it won't be made available to the public just yet because of security concerns.

Just over a week after submitting a trademark registration for the term, the artificial intelligence startup on Friday debuted its new Voice Engine technology. With just 15 seconds of a person's speech recorded, the business says it can replicate a person's voice.

Because of the risks of misuse, OpenAI claims it will preview the technology with early testers "but not widely release this technology at this time."

The San Francisco startup released a statement saying, "We recognize that generating speech that resembles people's voices has serious risks, which are especially top of mind in an election year."

Authorities in New Hampshire are looking into robocalls that mimicked President Joe Biden and were placed to thousands of voters just before the presidential primary.

Voice-cloning technology is already being sold by a variety of start-up businesses; some of these are available to the general public, while others are only available to certain types of businesses, such movie studios.

According to OpenAI, early Voice Engine testers committed to disclosing that the voices are artificial intelligence (AI) and to never mimic someone without that person's permission. The startup, which is most renowned for its chatbot and picture generator DALL-E, announced and did not publicly release their video generator Sora using a similar strategy.

Nonetheless, a trademark registration submitted on March 19 indicates that OpenAI most certainly wants to enter the voice recognition and digital assistant industries. Over time, advancements in this technology may enable OpenAI to rival other voice-activated devices, like Alexa from Amazon.