Voiceprinting Is the Future of Identification Tech
The future of technology is not on your fingers (sorry Apple, though nice try with the whole Touch ID thing). The future is in your throat. More companies are experimenting with voice biometrics, or voiceprints, as a way to pay for services and even track those who commit crimes. It's sort of exciting, but as with any new tech, it's also sort of scary.
You've had your voice recorded many times without even knowing. Think about the last time you called a cable company or a bank. "This call is being recorded for quality assurance purposes" says a robot. Of course you're not thinking about what, exactly, that means, or how your voice will be used down the road. You're concentrating on reducing your murderous rage because HBO went out during the True Detective finale.
Voiceprinting companies all use the same kind of tech to track peoples' voices. It's not just about the voice, either. It's about your teeth, the air you push out when you speak, and more. "Their [voiceprinting companies] technology measures the characteristics of a person's speech as air is expelled from the lungs, across the vocal folds of the larynx, up the pharynx, over the tongue, and out through the lips, nose, and teeth," reported The Associated Press. "Typical speaker recognition software compares those characteristics with data held on a server. If two voiceprints are similar enough, the system declares them a match."
If voiceprinting sounds like something fake, it isn't. Those calls, and many like it, are being recorded, digitized and cataloged by voiceprinting companies like ValidSoft in London. "There's a misconception that the technology we have today is only in the domain of the intelligence services, or the domain of 'Star Trek,'" ValidSoft's Paul Burmester told ABC News. "The technology is here today, well-proven and commonly available." In fact, a recent Associated Press poll of 10 voiceprinting companies found that they already have a database of about 65 million voiceprints.
When there's already that big of a database behind a relatively rare tech, you know why: Money. A voiceprinting industry analyst told The Guardian that he bets companies will make between $730 million and $900 million a year as more companies jump on board. Barclays, the bank, already loves voiceprinting. It lets their customers talk to access their accounts. "The general feeling is that voice biometrics will be the de facto standard in the next two or three years," a Barclays exec told the AP.
Obviously, the voiceprinting explosion has led to questions about privacy and if the tech is worth trusting. What if you have a cold one day? No money for you! Another concern is how voiceprinting is just one more way we've all become branded property.
"Companies are using data drawn from our internet and purchasing behaviour – and now our voices – and connecting it to the identities that they’ve created for us," Professor Joseph Turow, a privacy and surveillance expert at the University of Pennsylvania, told the Guardian. "Then they can lead us in a variety of different directions, based on their stereotype of us." Somehow, we can't help but think of all of this as a bad Tom Cruise movie. Hopefully it has a good ending.
[Image via Flickr - Ken Banks]
