Microsoft Teams Introduces Voice Cloning for Multilingual Meetings | Llm meaning in ai | Llm vs generative ai | Llm ai meaning | Turtles AI

Microsoft has unveiled a new real-time speech translation feature for Teams that will allow users to clone their voice in meetings, making it possible to speak in different languages ​​while maintaining their own tonality. The technology will be available starting in 2025 for Microsoft 365 subscribers and will have specific security measures.

Key points:

• Microsoft will introduce real-time voice cloning to Teams starting in 2025.
• The feature allows users to simulate their voice in nine different languages. 
• The voice simulation feature will be able to be turned on or off with the user’s consent. 
• The technology raises security concerns, especially about misuse by malicious actors.

During Microsoft Ignite 2024, the company presented a major innovation for Microsoft Teams, a tool that promises to revolutionize the dynamics of international meetings. Starting in early 2025, Teams users will be able to take advantage of "Interpreter", a feature that can translate speech into another language in real time, without losing the authenticity of the speaker’s voice. Using artificial intelligence, the technology will not only translate words, but will also replicate the tone of the voice, ensuring a more engaging and personal experience. Supported languages ​​include English, Italian, Japanese, Spanish, and Portuguese, among others.

Teams’ voice translation system is based on a "speech-to-speech" mechanism, which allows users to be understood in real time in different languages, without having to change their tone or style of communication. The main feature of this innovation is the ability to maintain your own voice even when speaking in a foreign language. According to Microsoft, this will offer a more natural experience, closer to direct conversation, where not only the message but also the speaker’s emotion will remain intact.

The technology, however, will not be accessible to everyone, but exclusively to users who have a Microsoft 365 subscription. An important peculiarity is that the voice cloning feature will not be active by default, but will have to be activated through the user’s consent, who will be notified via a notification at the start of the meeting or can enable it in the Teams settings. In any case, Microsoft has stated that the feature will not collect biometric data and will not alter the emotional tone of the speech except to the extent that this is naturally present in the original voice.

However, the use of voice cloning technologies raises many questions related to security. While the ability to replicate one’s own voice could prove extremely useful, it is not difficult to imagine abuse scenarios. For example, an attacker could provide "Interpreter" with a deceptive recording to obtain a translation that, in a different context, could be dangerous or misleading. In this regard, Microsoft has stated that the use of voice simulation will always be subject to a consent process and will never be activated without the explicit permission of the user.

This new application is part of a broader panorama of development of voice translation technologies, where other companies such as Meta and ElevenLabs are investing in similar tools, aiming to improve the accessibility of multilingual communication. Security concerns, however, are not an aspect to be underestimated, also considering the risks associated with deepfakes and digital impersonation, which have already become a real threat in many contexts. Recently, there have been reports of cyber attacks based on apparently legitimate virtual meetings on Teams, where the cloned voice of executives was used to trick victims into transferring large sums of money.

Despite these critical issues, Microsoft’s promise is to continue to strengthen security and privacy measures to protect users from potential abuse. To date, there are still some details to clarify regarding the protection measures that will be implemented to prevent this innovation from being exploited by malicious people.

The road to perfecting this technology seems long, but Interpreter in Teams certainly marks a significant step towards the future of digital communication.

It will be interesting to see how Microsoft will address the challenges related to security and how this new feature can evolve over time to meet the needs of an increasingly connected and multilingual world.