Samsung wants to clone your voice

You're sitting in a meeting and your smartphone suddenly vibrates - an important call, but you can't speak right now. Maybe it's enough to type? Samsung probably had scenarios like this in mind when they created the "Bixby Text Call" function. The idea: answering calls by having Bixby - Samsung's voice assistant - convert a text message into an audio message.

Until now, an artificial robot voice delivered this audio message. Yesterday Samsung announced that its own voice clone will soon be able to take over this work.

Voice copying getting easier

To do this, users have to record various sentences with the "Bixby Custom Voice Creator". The voice assistant analyses them and uses artificial intelligence to generate a copy of this voice.

How well this works is still unclear. The fact is that it is becoming increasingly easy to copy human voices. Microsoft's VALL-E model only needs a template of three seconds to do this.

Samsung wants to use these voice clones for more than just phone calls in the future. The tech company has not yet mentioned what exactly. The voice copy function is only available in Korean for the time being. It is also limited to the following smartphone models: the Samsung Galaxy S23, S23+ and S23 Ultra.

Bixby Text Call - the live answering machine with the robot voice - now also works in English. The Galaxy S23, S23+, S23 Ultra, Z Fold4 and Z Flip4 are compatible. At least software version One UI 5.1 must be installed. The Bixby innovations will come with a software update in February.